Until It Sleeps
by VoodooChild3000
Summary: Another prompt from the ST:XI kink meme, in which Winona's shuttle doesn't get away. Crazy grieving Nero, deciding Fate owes him, opts to keep her and baby Jim alive as surrogate wife and son, with all the angst and potential tragedy that will entail.
1. Capture

A/N: This is my second prompt attempt and the second of two fanfics I've got online right now. I had thought one was enough, but this one grabbed my brain and won't let go, so here we are. This isn't so overtly twisted and fucked-up as _Amor Delirus_, but it's definitely not sunshine and roses. Please let me know what you think. Special thanks to my awesome beta, faebee. :)

----

_Where do I take this pain of mine_

_I run but it stays right by my side_

_So tear me open and pour me out_

_There's things inside that scream and shout_

_And the pain still hates me_

_So hold me until it sleeps_

----

Even through her steady, subdued weeping, George's last words hovered in Winona's ears. She wished she was in shock --wished for dull numbness to take her, even if only for a little while, but thought and awareness remained steadfastly--horribly--sharp. There was nothing she could say, nothing she could do but try to focus on Jim, this little warm bundle of brand-new life beside her. Her son, one of her only living reminders of George. His elder brother was safe at home, and oh God, how was she to tell him of this? He was only two; would he even understand that his father would never come home? He at least might keep a few memories of George, but Jim would never know his father, would have no real knowledge of how kind and wonderful and _brave _George was. And that thought was enough to make her want nothing more than to curl up, sleep, and never wake.

Some of that longing must have telegraphed to her doctor, who appeared at her bedside with a silver hypospray. "I'm going to give you a mild sedative," she said. "The baby will be fine if you sleep for a while."

All Winona could do was nod, too tired and too grief-stricken to refuse, or to understand why she might _want _to refuse. And when the hypo touched her neck she drifted into darkness, blessed darkness without memory or pain.

---

Incredibly, unbelievably, the collision with that inferior little vessel had actually managed to damage the _Narada_.

Hell, it had done more than damage--Nero didn't know it, and Ayel wasn't about to tell him--but the Kelvin's impact had literally crippled the _Narada. _It had, through some wild stroke of ill-luck, knocked out the warp drive entirely. It was a minor miracle the thing hadn't breached and taken the entire ship out, but Nero didn't need to know _that_, either. There were a great many things Nero didn't need to know, and hadn't been told since Romulus had burned. Ayel was loyal to his captain without question, but he also feared him--this Nero was no longer the man he had known, the mining captain he'd served under for nearly a decade. This Nero was an unknown entity, vacillating between screaming rage and a thoughtful, silent calm that was almost worse. When he was in such a mood there was no knowing what he might think or do, and neither Ayel nor the rest of the crew were about to ask.

He sat now in his command chair, staring at nothing, his eyes almost vacant. The body of the slain Starfleet captain still lay at his feet, red blood already going rusty and sticky on the metal deck plates. It splattered Nero's hands, too, strange dots and crazed lines that seemed almost like a tattoo, and dripped thickly over the blades and handle of the T'eraln. Ayel didn't dare ask for orders--in this mood he wasn't at all certain his captain wouldn't turn around and use it on _him._

Finally, abruptly, Nero spoke. "Take out those shuttles," he said, standing. "As many as you can reach."

"Weapons system is offline, sir." That was Onen, the navigator. "We can fire, but there's no guidance."

He glared at her, dark eyes gone murderous, and Ayel froze when his grip tightened on the weapon. Onen was their only navigator; without her, they'd be helpless even if they did get the warp drive back online.

That realization must have penetrated even Nero's half-mad rage, for he turned away. "Capture them, then," he said irritably. "We still have tractor beams, don't we?"

"We do," Onen assured. "I'll pull in whatever's in range." She too seemed relieved when her captain left, her eyes meeting Ayel's for a brief moment. There was almost no way this would end well; whatever crew they caught would surely be slaughtered. And that…Ayel didn't know what to think about that. These people weren't Vulcans; they were merely humans who'd had the great misfortune of running smack into the _Narada _and her infuriated captain. Ayel and the rest of them were not soldiers; until quite recently none of them had killed another person in their lives. Some of them still hadn't--not everyone had fought the Klingons who'd tried and failed to take over the ship. Only Nero had outright murdered, when he'd killed the entire Senate that fled before Romulus was consumed. The rest of them…Ayel didn't know how they would take this. He still didn't know how _he _would, and he almost hoped Onen wouldn't manage to capture many of them after all.

----

Nero's mood was not improved when he saw the internal damage along his route to the cargo bay. That damned little ship had shaken about his vessel far more than it rightly should have, especially given all the much-vaunted technology that had been given to them by D'Spal. The fact that much of the actual structure was already repairing itself was beside the point.

His crew scrambled out of his way, nobody wanting to catch his eye while he had the T'eraln in his hand. Fortunately for everybody he ignored them; the only blood left in his wake was the sticky, tacky red of Captain Robau. Unfortunately, that would probably not remain the case once he'd found the shuttles. _Somebody_ was going to pay for this.

The_ Narada's _hold, like the rest of the ship, was massive. This was one of several docking bays, where once upon a time shuttles full of ore had buzzed to and fro. Their payload was long gone, replaced by stores of weapons and dark boxes stacked from deck plates to the shadowy ceiling far above. The light in here was dim, asmost of the power was being conserved for the main areas of the ship, throwing strange, twisted shadows over everything.

He was immensely disappointed by their haul--only three shuttles. The tractor beam too must be in sorry shape, he thought grimly--_how _had such an insignificant ship done so much damage? The warp core had to have ignited, or it couldn't possibly have wound up this bad.

And yet, he thought, as several of his crew hammered at the shuttle doors, he couldn't help but admire that young man who had been willing to sacrifice his life to use his ship as a battering-ram. It was an act that was almost… Romulan, and coming from a human was also quite surprising. The few humans Nero had known he'd known quite briefly, and he would not have credited them with such suicidal bravery. And, grief-stricken and half-mad though he was, he had to respect that.

He had less patience for the Starfleet personnel who tried to rush his crew, phasers flaring. What they thought they'd accomplish, he didn't know, and he didn't stop his crew when they fired back with lethal shots, rather than stuns. None of these people were upper officers--none of them were worth his time, and he ignored them as he approached the third, the one that remained sealed tight. By its markings it was a medical shuttle, which meant it was probably of little interest, too, and he watched idly while his people sawed patiently away with welding torches.

The door fell apart with a dull clang, landing hard on the decking, but no phaser fire issued from the craft. Instead a woman in white, a woman with short dark hair and the biggest eyes Nero had ever seen, emerged with her hands raised.

"We are a medical craft," she said steadily. "We mean you no harm." He could tell she was trying hard to block out the chaos beyond, the flashes and screams. The _Narada _crewmen looked at him, uncertain if they should fire on an unarmed woman, and still didn't shoot when Nero pushed impatiently past her.

There were several more medical personnel inside--nurses, technicians, trying to form a barrier around the single hospital bed. With even greater impatience he raised his weapon--

--only to be halted cold by the fitful, piercing wail of an discontented newborn.

He froze. This was not a sound that belonged on a ship--one he had certainly never expected to hear on _this _ship, not now, not after the end, after Mandana had burned with Romulus. It was loud, and it was irritated, clearly unhappy at being banged around so in its first moments of life.

He lowered his weapon, shoving a nurse out of the way, and stopped again. It _was _a baby, a baby not yet an hour old, beside its unconscious mother--a human woman, short and slight and golden-haired, like Mandana. Her hair had been so unusual for a Romulan, for his dark-haired race--he had wondered if their child would inherit it. He would never know, now.

One blood-sticky finger reached out to touch the child's smooth forehead, and almost amazingly it opened its eyes--incredibly blue eyes, the bluest he had ever seen. It stopped squalling, too, though that might not be a good sign. Nero didn't know enough about babies to know.

For what seemed a long time he stared down at it, until he turned swiftly away and found the dark-haired woman still immobile, facing his uncertain crew.

"You," he said, "you're a doctor, aren't you?"

She nodded, wordlessly.

"Take her to medical," he said. "The woman and baby, too. Kill the others."

----

Nero didn't really have any idea why he'd spared any of them. Keeping a human woman and a baby--a godsdamn _baby_--on the _Narada _was not a good idea, but it seemed like one at the time. Something in him wasn't yet distorted enough to murder a child, and for such a young child it was necessary to spare the mother as well; a Romulan sickbay certainly wasn't equipped to deal with a human newborn, even if any of his own medical staff had known _how_.

And…Mandana was still too fresh in his mind to allow him to kill a mother, any mother. Though he'd almost certainly deprived this child of its father, he could not kill it, too. Fate had robbed him of his son, his wife; he would not give it these two as well. Especially not when this woman looked so disturbingly like his wife in human form--no, he could not hurt her. Not now and, he suspected, not ever. Which would undoubtedly cause problems, but time enough for that later.

He at least washed his hands before he visited sickbay, ridding them of Robau's blood. His own personnel must have assisted the human doctor in getting her patients settled, for both mother and child were asleep in one of the beds when he entered.

The _Narada's _sickbay at lest looked more like that of a regular ship, without the exposed piping and various cobbled-together computer systems. It was of a decent size, too, since mining accidents had the potential to be devastating--a large, clean place, brightly lit, smelling faintly of antiseptic.

"Do you have everything you need from the shuttle?" he asked, without preamble, and the doctor nodded again. She was hovering very close beside her charges, a guardian who could do no more than be there. Yes, she was afraid, but far more so for the woman and the baby than for herself--interesting. Another human who seemed quite free of cowardice, though those huge eyes did serve to make her look perpetually startled. Perhaps she was not really human, or not wholly.

"I'm not going to hurt them," he said, shoving her out of his way, though rather more gently than he would have with anyone else--this doctor needed to stay alive, and in one piece. And strangely--how very strangely--he really did mean it. What in all seven hells he was to _do _with them, he didn't yet know, but he couldn't hurt them. "The child--is it a boy or a girl?" It was sleeping soundly, small red face scrunched up, the only part of it visible in a bundle of white blanket.

"A boy," the doctor said, speaking for the first time. Her voice was low, somehow soothing--probably helped with her profession, really. "She named him Jim." Not a woman of many words, this doctor.

"And her name?"

"Winona." No, not many words at all. She hesitated, and then, "What are you going to do with them?"

_Them_, he noticed. Not _us_, but _them_. Still far more concerned for her patients than herself. She upped his impression of humanity a little.

"I don't know yet," he said, reaching out but not quite touching a curl of Winona's sweat-damp golden hair. "You needn't worry. I won't hurt them. That's why you're here."

He felt her dark eyes on him--cautious, a little disbelieving. She hesitated again, but was ultimately unable to avoid asking, "Why not?" Curiosity--humans were famous for it for a reason.

Now Nero did let his finger touch Winona's hair, her temple, trailing along the ridge of her brow. She was so deeply unconscious she didn't so much as stir. "Because the universe owes me," he said softly. "See to it that they are both well. My medical staff will give you anything you need."

The doctor's discomfort was palpable; clearly she feared something quite different now. Disgusted, Nero turned on her, barely remembering to grab the collar of her shirt instead of her throat. He yanked her forward until her forehead was level with his nose.

"Don't even think it," he said, more softly still. "When I said I wouldn't hurt her, I _meant it_."

She twitched--startled, terrified--and staggered when he released her. "I want to know when she wakes," he said, and then he was gone, out the door to prowl the labyrinthine walkways of his ship. What did that damn bitch take him for? Did she really think he was some sort of rapist?

_Well, you did just kill most of her crewmates._

So what? Killing was…killing. It happened, especially around Romulans. _That_, however, would not. An increasingly large part of him wanted very much to keep Winona, but not as…as…some sort of _slave_, some kind of prisoner. She wasn't Mandana, she would never _be _Mandana, any more than baby Jim would be his dead child, but…all accounts balanced somewhere. He would not be forever deprived of a family, and while he was sane enough still to know Winona would be far from amenable to the idea at first, surely she would grow used to it in time. Humans, like Romulans, were adaptable creatures; sooner or later this insanity would work. He really did believe it, too.

_----_

Poor Winona will not be happy when she wakes up. Standby for creepy Nero interaction.


	2. Fear and Need

A/N: Sorry this one took so much longer; RL has decided to butt in and slow down my productivity for both this and Amor Delirus. I promise I will always update, though, even if it takes me longer than it has been--for a while with Amor Delirus I was managing to update every one to two days, but that's not going to be possible for a while. I'll get both out as often as I can, though.

To answer Masked Pineapple's question, Mandana is Nero's wife in Countdown, the prequel comic that came out before the movie. I'm drawing a lot of Nero's not-quite-horribleness out of that one, too.

----

When Winona first woke, she had no idea where she was--and for a few blessed moments, had no memory of anything that had brought her here. Even when the horror of remembrance did come it was fuzzy, distant, still unable to pierce the protective cocoon of drugs that shrouded her mind.

The only thing she was really aware of, in her brief moments of clarity, was Jim--Jim who still lay safe beside her. It took her a long while to realize they weren't on the shuttle, and longer still for that to frighten her. She was still so hazed with grief and pain and exhaustion that she had little room for anything more. Dim, familiar noises filtered through here and there--distant footsteps, the faint hum of computer systems, voices without words; the hundreds of little sounds that made up life on a starship. The fact that it was all _wrong _was one she refused to wake up enough to acknowledge just yet. Better to stay here, in this fuzzy, nebulous world, with only one tiny anchor keeping her from drifting away entirely.

And she did, for she didn't know how long. Jim was still asleep when nearby voices dragged Winona all unwilling back to something like reality--two voices, one familiar and one very much not. The first, a woman's, was the one she recognized--her doctor, the woman who had delivered Jim--how long ago, now? She had no way of knowing. The second, the utterly foreign one, was male, deep and accentless.

"She's not really awake yet," the doctor was saying, her soft alto tones sounding distinctly worried beneath their professional veneer. "I don't know how coherent she is--"

"I don't care." No worry in _that _voice, only command--and irritation. Oh God, please let this be a Starfleet ship--please let them already have been picked up, rescued, on their way safely home. But even before she opened her eyes, she knew that was not the case.

When she did open them, she froze. Her vision would not properly focus at first, skittering over the white-faced, huge-eyed doctor, coming to rest on the man beside her--a very tall man, too tall, in some kind of heavy black coat. Shaved head, face etched with tattoos that looked almost black, and dark, alien eyes whose expression she could not and did not want to read. Pointed ears, too, but whoever he was, he was most emphatically not Vulcan--Romulan? Though the Federation had been at war with the Romulans almost a century before, nobody on this side of the line knew what they looked like; nobody had had visual communication then. All she knew of Romulans was that they were an extremely warlike and militaristic society, and that being their prisoner…no. God no. At this point she hardly cared what they did to her, but _Jim_…what in hell would they do to her baby? No, not this, not _now_, it was just _too much_….

She hugged Jim tighter as the pair approached, as though by doing so she'd actually stand some chance of protecting him. Wide, glassy eyes locked on this terrible stranger, unblinking, wondering if he'd kill her first or if he'd make her watch Jim's death before granting hers.

Instead, almost more alarmingly, he half-sat on the edge of the bed beside her, and the expression on his face was…she didn't know _what _it was, only that it was not what she had expected. It so jarred her that she couldn't help but flinch when one hot finger brushed the hair back from her forehead, a gesture surprisingly gentle and horrifyingly intimate. She hoped that didn't mean what she thought it meant, that he didn't want what that gesture suggested; because of Jim, she couldn't fight him if he did. And if the grief itself wasn't enough to drive her mad, _that_ in concert with it almost certainly would.

And she was so _tired_--too tired to fight, too tired even to keep back the tears that fought to fall when she closed her eyes. What dignity did she have to lose, now? She didn't matter; only Jim mattered. As long as he didn't kill her, and leave Jim without a mother or father….

Winona's eyes snapped open again when that hot finger traced the line of her tears, from the corner of her eye into the hairline at her temple.

"Don't cry," he said--half order, half supplication. "I won't hurt you, nor will my crew. Your doctor will take care of you until you and your son are strong again."

My crew, he said. _My _crew. This must be the captain, then, the man who had killed Captain Robau, who had destroyed their ship and murdered her husband--her eyes widened, and she fought an urge to jerk away. Knowing who he was, his words did not reassure her--quite the opposite. A man who would destroy a peaceful ship without provocation was not to be trusted, whatever his promises.

And…who knew how elastic a definition of 'hurt' he had? For all she knew it just meant no one would hit her or Jim; it didn't guarantee….

"And what," she asked cautiously, voice hoarse in an ash-dry throat, "do I need to do in exchange?" She cursed herself inwardly, cursed the weariness that couldn't keep the fear from her voice.

Anger flared in those alien eyes, but only for a moment--after a fraction of an instant it was replaced, to her bewildered surprise, with a level of pain and raw grief that rivaled her own.

"_Nothing_," he said, a little more forcefully than he'd perhaps intended. And then, with some bastard approximation of gentleness, "Live. Just live, both of you, and--do not be afraid of me. I will do nothing to you that you do not ask."

She couldn't help but flinch when he leaned in to press his lips to her forehead, and could do nothing but stare when he left, confused as well as scared half senseless. What he meant by all of that, she didn't know, and was too weary to ponder it. Darkness took her once more, leaving further thought and worry for her next waking.

----

She was afraid of him.

Of course she was--that was hardly surprising. Even had he not destroyed her ship, he knew he made a terribly formidable sight to a human--as would all his crew. It was no surprise, but that hardly helped Nero's mood--he didn't _want _her to be afraid of him, damn it. And there was nothing he could do about it save wait and let time prove to her he meant what he said. He had always been a patient man, but he was hard-pressed to be so now, not when he thought he might have something _decent _so perilously close within reach.

He was still in a foul temper when he reached the bridge and found Ayel--capable, faithful Ayel--supervising repairs. He could see the caution in Ayel's face when his second-in-command looked at him, and quite suddenly it left him drained. His crew feared him--the crew that had served under him for years, whom he'd led and protected. Too much fear here, now, permeating this ship like poison.

"Rest, Ayel," he said, watching the tension drain from the younger man's face at his tone. "I will call you next watch."

"Aye, sir." Nero saw the glance he shared with Onen--Onen, who he'd very nearly killed earlier. If he wasn't careful, Nero knew, his own temper would destroy him. But that knowledge could not obviate his anger forever.

"How long until main weapons are back online?" he asked, taking a seat in his command chair. The stench of slagged electronics had lessened, he noticed, the ship's air system clearing away the smoke.

"Two hours, tops. It wasn't as bad as I'd thought." She didn't look at him when she spoke--her head remained bent over her console, tangled brown hair obscuring her face. She was so _young_, Nero realized--not yet twenty-five, she'd only served aboard the _Narada _for two years. Her fiancé had just been released from the military--they were to have married before the year was out. He forgot, sometimes, under the weight of his own grief, that the rest of his crew had lost just as much as he had.

"Rest yourself, when you've finished," he said, and that did make her look at him--for a brief moment he sounded more like the Nero his crew had known than he had since before Romulus burned. So much had happened in so short a time, so much that had drastically changed them all, but there were still echoes, from time to time, of who they'd been--his were just far more infrequent than anyone else's.

He'd have to force them around Winona, however difficult a prospect that might be. He couldn't let her see that other side of him--the side he would never have wanted Mandana to see. It was almost frighteningly easy to think of Winona in terms of Mandana; if he wouldn't do it in front of Mandana, he wouldn't do it in front of Winona. It gave him an anchor around which to tether his judgment.

And where would he _put _her, when she was able to leave sickbay? Ideally with him, to his preference, but so early on that was a bad idea for several reasons-it would terrify her, and distract him in ways he did not need to be distracted right now. Near him, at least, quarters close to his own, that he might visit her, prove he meant her no harm. Nero was many things, had done and planned to do _more _terrible things, but he wasn't a rapist. His mind was not so far gone as to be capable of something like that; he genuinely believed his vengeance was justified and right, but there was nothing right nor justifiable in rape.

Even monsters had limits.

One day, he hoped, she'd come to him willingly--maybe, in time, even come to love him. The thought that no sane woman could ever love a man who had murdered her husband never even entered his head. All he could think of was someday being able to touch her as he had Mandana, to have her sleep beside him without fear--he was still sane enough to realize that might take years, but he sincerely believed it would eventually. Maybe there would be another child, a brother or sister for Jim--Jim, James Kirk, who in this timeline would certainly never captain the _Enterprise_. Spock was clear evidence that Vulcans and humans could breed, and Romulan physiology was still not very much different than Vulcan; maybe it could happen for he and Mandana, too. He would not be forever denied a family; he would not allow it. Sooner or later Winona would have to agree--preferably sooner.

----

Winona's thoughts couldn't be further from Nero's. She was still so exhausted and so scared she could hardly think straight, and what thoughts she did have made her wish for a return to unconsciousness.

She flat-out didn't believe Nero when he said he wouldn't hurt her. Such might be his intent now, but Romulans were not known for their self-control; sooner or later he'd want more from her than her continued breathing, than her continued presence on his ship, and she had no idea how she was to stand it if--when--he did. And for Jim's sake she _had _to, whatever the effect on her very sanity. She couldn't even wish she would die.

Part of her still hoped desperately they might be rescued by Starfleet, but even in her current state she knew how unlikely that was. She'd seen this ship; even a whole fleet might not have a chance against it, and when the Romulan eventually tired of her he was hardly likely to just let her go. Maybe even giving him what he wanted would only forestall the inevitable. And that was a thought she simply could not endure. Would it be better to die now, with Jim, while he was too young to know what was going on? Did she want to wait until he was a toddler, or older, and would know to be afraid?

These thoughts went around and around her dizzy head, until the doctor--Sy, her name was, Doctor Sy--brought her some cold water and soup--Terran soup, from the shuttle, presumably. Winona fed Jim, lulling him back to sleep, and then, having nothing else to do, stared at the ceiling and tried not to think.

She failed. Ought she to test this Romulan's patience? Would it be at all safe, or should she, God help her, give him what he wanted before he asked, and took it anyway? Or…should she end this now, for her and for Jim, before the Romulans could hurt either of them?

That last was tempting, horribly, horribly tempting. As terrible as it would be to murder her own baby, it would be so much worse to watch the Romulans kill him at four, or five, or six--assuming they both lived even that long. Even considering it would have made her cry again if she'd had any tears left, but she didn't, not now. All she could do was sink lower and lower, down into mental shadows far removed from waking life, until she could go no deeper. And at that fathomless depth she found a weird sort of calm, free of the near-paralyzing fear that had gripped her since she'd first heard the call for the Kelvin's evacuation. What could the Romulans do? Torture her, rape her, kill her and Jim, but if they died--when they died--she'd see George again. They would die, and it would all be over.

----

At some point she must have slept, because when the world re-focused, he was there--the Romulan. The captain. It occurred to her that even now she didn't know his _name_, and wasn't sure she wanted to. He was watching her and Jim with those black alien eyes, and once again his expression was such a mixture of thought and emotion she couldn't read it at all. Winona was still so far down in that inner shadow that he no longer frightened her, though--well, not much. Nobody could ever be wholly at ease with that fierce tattooed face watching them, those black-black eyes bent on them. There was so much _intensity_ about the man it was almost exhausting just to look at him, a sense of coiled energy wound up like a too-tight spring that might give at any moment. What the hell had _happened_ to him, to make him so? Nobody was born that way.

He said nothing, and for what seemed an eternity neither did she, until finally she found enough voice to say, "What's your name?" She might as well know her tormenter.

There was a bizarre, almost obsessive gentleness in his answer, a tenderness that would have scared the life out of her if she'd still been capable of it. "You couldn't pronounce my real name," he said softly. "Call me Nero."

Nero. Nero, the mad Earth emperor who had, so legend went, fiddled while the capital of his empire burned around him. It fit, she thought grimly, even with what little she knew of him.

She only flinched a little when he touched her hair--the very ends, carefully far from her scalp, and she couldn't help but wonder he was thinking, though she didn't want to. So she stayed very still, not fighting him yet, but her eyes never left his face--she didn't dare let them. Even at this distance she could feel his higher-than-human body heat, could smell the peculiar scent of him--sharp sweet machine oil, harsh chemical soap, and something that was probably just him, clean Romulan. Not unpleasant but different, very different.

"My wife had hair like yours," he said, and with those words she understood with horrible clarity why he'd spared her. It didn't take a genius to see he was far from stable; whatever had happened to his wife, he wanted a replacement. There was absolutely no way this could end well.

"What happened to her?" That was it, keep him talking--find out whatever she could about him, anything she might use. Distract him, even if only temporarily, from whatever else he might want.

"She died," he said, and Winona was startled at the sheer depth of grief in his voice. "And my unborn son, when my planet burned."

_That_ surprised her. Surely if something that cataclysmic had happened to Romulus, even the Federation would have heard of it. Just how crazy _was _this man?

"What was her name?" she asked trying to cover her startled confusion.

"Mandana." His voice caressed the syllables. "A little over a week ago now."

_That _soon? He wanted a replacement _that _soon? That almost more than anything else drove home to Winona how crazy he must be--and why. God knew that if she hadn't been saddled with this fresh horror she'd be half-mad with grief herself right now. Was that madness why he was convinced his planet had been destroyed? It would make sense, in a horrible, twisted way; _his _world had, after all, ended.

"Is that why you spared me?" She wanted to hope that it was merely because he couldn't bear to kill another mother, but she knew better. Unfortunately; she would have treasured a little ignorance, even if only for a while. If he wanted a wife, he wanted more than simple companionship, and she knew where _that _would end up. Exactly where she'd feared it would.

"I said I wouldn't hurt you," he said, as though he'd read her mind--could Romulans do that, like Vulcans? Oh, she hoped not; that would just be too much. "And that would do nothing you did not ask of me. You need not be afraid I'll hurt you in _that _way, either."

_Yet_, she thought, and fought a shudder. Who knew how long it would take him to get impatient? And if he could read minds, he'd know how much she'd hate him even if she…didn't let him get impatient. That wouldn't end well, either. If he was willing to wait for her, it meant he wanted more than just a…a _toy_, apparently not realizing he'd get no more from her. Then again, if he was that crazy it might never occur to him.

"The doctor said his name is Jim," he went on, when she didn't say anything, and his tone was very, very odd. She didn't know what to make of it, and didn't try. He touched the baby's downy head and she held her breath, but his touch was light and Jim didn't stir. Winona breathed out.

"It is. James Tiberius--" after George's dad, oh God George, why aren't you here?

"Kirk," Nero finished for her. "James Tiberius Kirk." He spoke the name like he'd heard it before, she realized, and wondered how, and why. There was something that would have been amusement in it, had it not been so crowded out by madness and grief. "Don't worry that I would ever hurt him. I think he will go on to do very great things." And he sounded so convinced of it that she only wondered further.

"Onen, my navigator, is altering some clothes for you," he added. "She's much taller than you, but they should fit well enough when she's through. And the crew is preparing quarters for you and Jim." He seemed to speak very carefully there, as though stressing the quarters were _only _for her and Jim. At least he wasn't going to make her share his bed in a platonic sense either, not yet. His consideration was almost more disturbing than imperious cruelty would have been; it made him extremely unpredictable. "For now rest, and heal."

He did kiss her forehead again, warm fingers lingering in her hair, but she manage not to flinch this time. If that was all he wanted, she could let him have it. Winona just hoped to any deities that might be listening that it would be a long while before he wanted more.


	3. Sickness and Confusion

Much apologies for taking so long to update this one, and _Amor Delirus. _RL can be incredibly nasty, but my goal is to not leave you guys hanging like that again--I don't know how frequently I'll be able to update both, but I promise it won't be several months between chapters again.

----

Winona wasn't familiar enough with Romulan ship-time to know how long she spent in sickbay. It might have been four days or even a week, but she slept so often she couldn't guess.

The Romulan--and she kept thinking of him as that even though she now knew his name--visited her at odd intervals, whenever his assumedly heavy workload permitted it. Those visits always strained her, because she worked very carefully not to piss him off--a difficult thing to do when she was so filled with grief and anger herself. True to his word, though, he did nothing even remotely untoward; it was just the way he _looked _at her that made her inwardly shudder. Simple, uncomplicated lust she could have dealt with, but this was not it. Not in the least. Hungry, yes, but for something far less tangible than physical contact. And that somehow only made her hate him more--what right had this murderer to expect any solace? From anyone, but especially her, whose life he had just destroyed?

It was after his fifth visit that she was moved, released from sickbay into quarters of her own, with Doctor Sy next door. They were Spartan enough, as was only to be expected on a mining vessel, but Onen, the mysterious Romulan woman she had yet to meet, had added what extra touches she could. A homemade cradle for Jim, extra blankets, a softer pillow. Winona wondered just how many women there were on the ship, and what the hell they thought about this whole situation. Aside from Nero and the few medics in sickbay, she'd seen none of the ship's crew. They couldn't all be as insane as their captain, or so she devoutly hoped.

Once Jim was fed and content to gurgle to himself in his cradle, Winona investigated her quarters. They were small enough, a little smaller than those she'd occupied on the _Kelvin_, with an adjacent washroom that actually, to her amazement, ran on water. She hadn't seen a water shower anywhere off Earth. The main room held her bunk, a folding closet for the clothes Onen had fitted for her, and even a small holovid screen, something that had to be a luxury on such a ship. Onen had also provided her with things only a woman would think of--a comb, proper shampoo that had to have come out of some personal store.

Once she'd seen everything she sat on her bunk, head in her hands, and listened to Jim coo. What was she _doing _here? And where were they even going after this? Whatever the Romulan might say, she didn't believe Romulus had been destroyed--didn't, and wouldn't until she heard it from someone less obviously insane. The thought of winding up on that barbaric planet was almost more than she could endure. The Federation had almost no concrete knowledge of Romulan culture, save for the fact that it was incredibly warlike, but she couldn't imagine anything like an extended stay on that world.

A knock sounded at the door, jerking her out of her reverie, but the bolt of panic that jolted through her subsided when her visitors turned out to be Doctor Sy and yet another Romulan--a woman. Onen.

"Hi," Winona said, not knowing what else _to _say. Onen was as tall as all the other Romulans Winona had yet seen, but she had a thick mane of brown hair and looked rather younger--perhaps even younger than Winona herself.

The woman nodded acknowledgment. "Hello. I asked your doctor if I might see you. Is there anything else you need?"

_Besides a fast shuttle out of here? _Winona thought. "No, you've…set things up nicely. Thank you."

The doctor, who seemed to be the only one of the three not afflicted by awkwardness, ran a tricorder over her, those huge eyes apparently satisfied with what they saw. "I'll bring you another vitamin shot at dinner," she said, squeezing Winona's hand before turning to Jim, whose condition seemed likewise satisfactory. That done, she left the other two alone--Onen must have somehow convinced her it was safe to do so. Winona hoped she was right.

"Uh, please, sit." The only available space was the bunk, so Onen sat beside her. "I appreciate the, uh, the clothes and things." Good grief, this was uncomfortable.

Onen, it seemed, wasn't one to bother with small talk. "I know you don't want to be here," she said, turning serious dark eyes to Winona. "I can't blame you. But the captain wouldn't have kept you alive if he meant to hurt you."

Winona jerked at the mention of the Romulan, and cursed herself for it. She was still an officer, dammit, even if her ship had been destroyed and she was almost completely alone in enemy territory.

"He's crazy, isn't he?" she asked before she thought.

Onen shut her eyes, pained. "Captain Nero…has broken a little, yes, but we all have. I don't know what he's told you about Romulus--"

"He said it was gone," Winona interjected, her skepticism obvious.

"It is. In our time, it is, and we all--lost everyone. It's unhinged the captain more than most of us, but we're all…I simply want you to understand that he's not a complete monster. Not yet. He won't hurt you, and neither will anyone else."

Winona didn't like the 'not yet' bit of that statement. Not at all.

"He destroyed my ship without provocation," she said, more than a little angrily. "He murdered all the other prisoners, and he's only kept _me _alive because I remind him of his wife."

Onen stared at her. "He told you about Mandana?" she said, shocked. "He hasn't mentioned her name since…since it happened.

Winona nodded bleakly. "I think he thought it would be some kind of excuse," she said. "That it would make what he did…that it would make it _okay_," she added savagely.

"No," Onen said softly. "No, he's not _that _mad. He's trying to justify it to himself as much as to you."

She glanced at the cradle. "May I hold him?" she asked, and there was a faint note of wistfulness in her voice that startled Winona, so much that she actually said yes.

Onen lifted Jim as though he were fragile as glass, and he blinked his big blue eyes at her. "I was to have been married," she said, and now the wistfulness was palpable. "In six months, when we'd sold another cargo."

That made Winona pause, and realize for the first time that everyone on the entire ship had to be mourning someone. "I'm sorry," she whispered--the only thing she could say.

"My loss is not your fault," Onen said, shaking her head and handing Jim back to her, "though yours is ours. I know you don't want to be here, but you're making the captain actually _think_ where none of us can. And I have hope that will…help, in some way."

She shook her head again. "I am not the only woman on this ship," she said. "If you ever want company, we're here. Don't be afraid of us. And I know I'm not the only one who would enjoy seeing your son."

Almost to Winona's surprise, she really _wasn't _afraid of Onen--the first Romulan aboard she could say that of. "I…think I will," she said. "Come find you, I mean." It wasn't as though she'd have much else to do, after all. "And you know where I am."

Onen gave her a faint, fleeting smile. "I do," she said, and then she was gone, leaving Winona marginally less bleak. Onen, at least, seemed less…well, alien.

She looked down at Jim, who looked back at her, and sat back on the bed. He'd be all right--she'd make sure of that. He was her reason to keep going, and if Onen was right, she might even have allies here in the women of the crew. Oh, she hoped so. She had to hope for _something._

----

At some point she slept, and only knew she did so because a second knock at the door woke her. Startled, she rubbed a hand over her eyes and laid Jim--also asleep--back in his cradle. She dreaded who this caller must be, and she was right--when she opened the door, she found the Romulan on the other side. How odd, she thought fleetingly, that Onen was so easily Onen, but she couldn't bring herself to assign the Romulan's name to him in her head. The thought of letting him into the one place on the ship that was even marginally hers was more than a little alarming, but he didn't ask her to. Instead he said, "I would like you to walk with me, if you will."

Her instant impulse was to say no, but her brain kicked in before she could voice it. The fact that he was _asking _rather than ordering was not lost on her. Instead she said, "Jim--he's asleep."

"Your doctor can watch him a while." She could read nothing in his voice, or his expression, but it was probably wisest not to refuse. She delivered Jim to Doctor Sy without another word, wondering and not wanting to wonder where the hell they were going. The doctor, who seemed equally alarmed, dared make no protest, either, beyond, "Don't overtire her--she still needs to save her strength."

"I won't," was all the Romulan said, and led Winona away.

He said nothing further, and Winona, who was still amazed at the sheer size of the ship, didn't either. It seemed nearly as big as a space station, so vast the ceiling was lost to view, all shadow and green light. She'd had no idea the Romulans possessed the sort of technology to build such a ship, but if they really were from the future it would certainly make sense.

She was a little too aware of his presence beside her, despite the careful distance she maintained, and had to fight to keep her skin from crawling. Even with that distance she could feel the heat he radiated, and the fact that he was so ungodly tall didn't help--Winona wasn't exactly short, but he towered over her. She thought about what Onen had said of him, and tried to reconcile it with what she herself had seen, and failed utterly. Right now it was probably better not to try. The silence was stretching so unbearably that she almost wished he would say something--anything--but he didn't, so finally she had to force herself to speak.

"Are all Romulan ships like this?" she asked--it was the only thing she could think to say. She felt him looking at her, though she didn't return it; she kept her eyes on the distant ceiling, at the lights so far above they almost seemed like green stars.

"No," he said, still looking at her. "The _Narada _is…different. The technology behind it does not yet exist."

"So you really are from the future," she said, half to herself.

Before he could respond, their path opened out onto what was little more than a wide catwalk of black deck plates, without a rail of any kind, that stretched over a yawning abyss. Winona, who had never been at home with heights at the best of times, literally staggered as vertigo flooded all her senses. She might well have tripped right over the edge if the Romulan hadn't caught her, pulling her back to the more sheltered corridor. His hand was like a band of warm iron around her arm, and her officer's training took over before she could stop it--without so much as a thought she struck him, hard, trying to jerk away as she did.

He actually released her, and no sooner had he done so than the enormity of what she'd just done hit her. Oh, _shit_.

"I'm sorry," she said, terror hitting her in the chest like a brick. "You startled me--it was just--"

"Instinct?" he volunteered. To her incredulity, he didn't seem angry--there was only mild annoyance in those black eyes, and if she wasn't still so shocked she would have sworn there was respect as well. "You need not apologize. A Romulan would have done the same, if startled. We were--are--a very paranoid people."

She blinked, trying desperately to change mental gears as well as stop her head spinning. She couldn't do both at once, and wound up sitting on the deck with her head between her knees, waiting until she no longer felt like she was going to fall over or be sick or both.

When her head cleared she found the Romulan kneeling in front of her, a little too close for comfort, but at least this time she managed to override her instinct to scramble back ward. It was a near thing, though, because there was that _look _again, that need and want that were so hopelessly complicated she doubted even he understood them. And as always it drew the by-now unfortunately familiar combination of grief-fear-rage that she was really going to have to do something about before it drove her utterly mad or got her killed.

"I'm not fond of heights," she said, by way of distancing him and herself. "Never have been. Going that way might not be the best idea."

To her complete surprise, the Romulan actually arched an eyebrow. "No," he agreed, with a dryness quite at odds with the look in his eyes, "it seems it wouldn't." For a moment it seemed as though he saw her as _her_, as Winona and not whatever insane avatar he'd built her to be in his fractured mind. She didn't know if that was heartening or terrifying. All she did know was that this vertigo, physically unpleasant though it was, was something of a godsend--it gave her something to focus on, something other than _him _and how damnable uncomfortable he made her. And who knew, she thought, with crazily black humor, maybe if she stood too soon she'd throw up on him. Wouldn't _that _be a turn-off.

"We will have to work on that," the Romulan said gravely. "Much of the Narada is built that way, and I would rather you not be unable to traverse over half the ship."

_That _surprised her--she'd figured he'd want her to stay more or less confined to quarters. Then again, though, it wasn't as though she'd have the first clue how to sabotage anything--the technology was far beyond her, and she could neither read nor speak Romulan. The worst she could do was get in the way or, more likely, get lost. Assuming she didn't fall right over the edge of one of those platforms.

She shut her eyes, waiting as patiently as she could for the spinning to stop. It couldn't just be vertigo, it wouldn't be lasting this long…the doctor was right, she hadn't nearly regained enough of her strength yet. Grief had taken as much of a toll as childbirth itself, and even their relatively brief walk had tired her.

The Romulan must have--rather belatedly--realized this, for when Winona finally opened her eyes again she found him looking at her with legitimate concern. She didn't like that look any more than she'd liked any of the others he'd given her thus far, and in the interest of dispelling it she stood--or tried to, which was a very grave mistake, for no sooner had she done so than she lost her battle with her stomach. All over his boots.

She sank back to the floor and laughed--laughed because she would not allow herself to cry, slightly hysterical laughter that had nothing to do with humor. In that moment she sounded, had she known it, nearly as unhinged as Nero himself. Even if she had, she was so tired and so sick and so miserable she wouldn't have cared.

----

Nero hadn't known what had motivated him to seek Winona out so soon after she'd been moved from sickbay. He couldn't seem to keep away from her, even though even his cracked brain realized she needed to adjust in something like peace. Now he was regretting it--not so much because of his shoes as because she was so obviously miserable, physically and emotionally.

Weirdly--crazily--having her throw up on him reminded him sharply of Mandana, who had done so more than once in the early stages of her pregnancy. Then they'd both laughed over it, and watching Winona now was a truly horrible parallel.

He brushed her hair out of her face. "I should have listened to your doctor," he said. "I shouldn't have brought you out so soon. I did not realize you were still so sick."

She tensed visibly when he drew her to her feet, but at least she didn't try to hit him again. He'd honestly admired her for that punch--she was no pushover, his Winona, no weak soft human in spite of her current illness. He could see the ghost of the officer she'd been scarcely a week before--the officer she still was, somewhere beneath that exhausted grief.

He tried to be careful with her--as careful as he could be, for he did not yet know how physically fragile humans really were in comparison to Romulans. They weren't half so strong, but what other physical frailties they might have, he didn't yet know, and had no desire to find out the hard way. She still feared him, though she was too well-trained to show it overtly, and the last thing he wanted was to give her reason to be afraid he'd hurt her by _accident._ For a moment he thought she was trying to pull away, but she must have realized she wasn't going to be able to walk on her own, for ultimately she let him help her without protest. Her face was so pale it was grey, but she stubbornly kept moving, her eyes fixed on the end of the corridor. She really did seem so fragile, her skin so much cooler than he was used to, but she kept going anyway unwilling to show any more weakness than she had to. And all Fates did he admire that.

He stopped at one of the innumerable replicator units that were scattered throughout the ship--so large a vessel as the _Narada _needed them everywhere--and got her a cup of water. She sat on the deck to drink it, back against the wall, and though he knew it made her uncomfortable he watched her closely.

"Don't do that again," he said, and she choked on her water, turning wide grey-blue eyes to his. "You came with me because you did not dare refuse. Don't do it again. If you are ill when I come to you, tell me. Don't be afraid I'll be angry with you."

She watched him warily over the rim of her cup, clearly trying to gauge whether or not he meant what he said. It exasperated him.

"I didn't bring you here so I could kill you through ignorance of human frailty," he said, again touching her hair--he didn't seem to be able to help himself, it was so like Mandana's. "If you are ill or exhausted, say so. I would rather you not vomit on me every time I walk with you."

That made her choke again, laughing once more that hysterical, humorless laugh. Nero recognized it all too well--that sort of laughter led to madness, and it alarmed him. He was pushing her too fast, dammit, which irritated him--far more with himself than with her. He'd known this would take patience, and if he didn't have patience he'd wreck everything. He _did _just murder her husband, after all--these things would take time. The fact that he thought any amount of time would be sufficient said a lot more about Nero than he could possibly have realized, or would ever want anyone to know.

She didn't say anything--once her laughter tapered off she was silent, and when she'd finished her water he put the cup back in the replicator and helped her to her feet once more. He didn't think he was imagining the fact that she was leaning on him a little more heavily, that her steps were a little more uneven, and he cursed himself for bringing her out at all. Nero knew so little about childbirth that he didn't even know how long it took a Romulan woman to recover, much less a human--he'd have to speak to her doctor about it, so he would not make this mistake again.

When he'd finally returned her to her room he went to summon the doctor, who took a startled look at his boots and then his face, searching, no doubt, for any signs of homicidal rage. Which only irritated him even more.

"I did take her too far," he said shortly. "She's ill--see to her. Take what you need from sickbay, and for the love of all Fate, _protest _next time you know better than to let her do something." And with that he stalked off, in an incredibly foul mood. That had most definitely not gone as he had hoped.

----

He stalked until he found Onen, again hard at work reprogramming the guidance computer. Sweat and oil streaked her face and her hands from too much rewiring, her hair had come half loose from its braid and was held out of her way with what looked like a bootlace, and she eyed him warily when he approached. When had his crew come to fear him so? Nero wondered. Had he really changed so much in so short a time?

"At ease, Onen," he said, when she scrambled to her feet. "You have been to see Winona?"

She nodded, still wary. "And her son."

"Did she say anything to you?"

His navigator paused--clearly she was wondering what she could and could not say to him. "She's afraid of you," she said at last. "She didn't say so, but it's obvious. She doesn't believe you won't hurt her, she's half-crippled by grief, and I'm not certain how stable her mind is right now." She caught his expression, and added, before it could turn truly murderous, "I did tell her you would not harm her or her son. That nobody would. Maybe, in time, she'll come to trust me."

Nero took her meaning, or what he thought was her meaning, easily enough. Right now Winona didn't trust _any _of them--with good reason, as even he had to admit. Onen could perhaps be his ambassador--she had been a friendly young woman, Before, and out of his crew was one of the most likely to be able to gain a human's trust. And it might well be good for her as well, having another woman to speak to--there were only sixteen women on his ship, out of a crew compliment of a hundred and fifty, and like everyone else on board they'd lost everyone they cared about on Romulus. Parents, sweethearts, siblings…all gone. They and Winona might be good for one another, and the baby…

He hadn't yet wrapped his mind around the idea that he had James Tiberius Kirk on his ship--a Jim Kirk scarcely a week old. Without realizing he'd been doing it, Nero had just smashed history as he knew it to pieces, and it would be some time yet before he'd give much thought as to what to _do _with all those pieces. Right now he had enough to be getting on with as it was--they all did. Time enough for that later.

What he _would _have to decide, much sooner, was where they would go and what they would do once the _Narada _was repaired. Without the red matter they couldn't move against Vulcan, but he couldn't abide the thought of returning to Romulus--not now, not yet. Though it still lived in this time, it was not _his _Romulus, and he knew the violent history of his planet too well. He had no desire to surrender his ship to the Romulan military, as it would almost certainly order him to do--he'd faced enough discrimination for being a miner rather than a soldier in his own time, and the Romulus of history had been even worse, with a very rigid caste system. Right now it had been little less than a century since the war that had established the Neutral Zone; it was entirely possible the Senate wouldn't believe him if he said he'd come from the future, Romulan though he obviously was. Nero hadn't been lying when he told Winona they were a very paranoid people, and it had been infinitely worse in Romulus's past.

This past. Now.

He'd have to think very carefully about what he did next, for in time he _did _want to return. When the pain of seeing a world that was his and yet not would be more bearable. When they could go home as conquerors, not minders. He had the T'eraln; who knew, maybe in time he could make Mandana an Empress.

Winona. Winona, not Mandana. Even Nero was sane enough to realize he must not blur the line between the two. Like Winona's terrible laughter, down that path lay only madness. He could not so desecrate Mandana's memory, and he could not be so unfair to Winona; he would certainly not want her conflating him with her dead husband, even had that been at all possible. Which, he thought, with somewhat morbid humor, it most certainly wasn't. Winona might look like a human Mandana, but there was absolutely no resemblance between him and George Kirk.

He sighed, and watched Onen watching him. "Befriend her, if you can," he said. "When you can. See to it she does not remain so miserable." He just had to give her time. He knew it, but knowing did not make the thought any easier.

----

I don't even know what those two are doing; they kind of decided to do their own thing in this chapter. The line about returning to Romulus as conquerors rather than miners is from the novelization of the movie, and it makes a lot of sense, given how screwed-up Romulan society is in this time.

Anyway, thank you to all my reviewers, and I'll try to keep updating in a slightly more timely fashion from now on. :)


	4. Grief and Planning

A/N: In which Nero starts to get at least a little inkling of just what he's got himself into, and vice versa. I eased up on poor Winona in this chapter (a little), but Nero's only getting more miserable, the poor bastard.

----

A week passed, and then two, and almost against her will Winona found herself settling into a routine.

Breakfast was shared with Doctor Sy, in one or another's quarters, after which the doctor gave her a check-up--slowly but surely her health was improving, until she was almost back to normal. Physically, anyway. Often as not after that Sy would head off to sickbay, though what she did there Winona never asked. She was grateful to have the rest of the morning to herself, alone with Jim in her quarters.

She often talked to George in the morning, hoping he could hear her from wherever he'd gone beyond the grave, or talked of him to Jim. Her son might never know his father, but she was determined he'd know _of _him--his kindness, his strength, his bravery and love, and though Jim was much too young to understand, she wanted his eventual first thoughts to be of his father, of the stories she told.

To her relief, after that disastrous walk the Romulan largely left her in peace--she'd seen him only twice since then, and then briefly. Onen was a much more frequent--and welcome--visitor; Onen, and occasionally one or two of the other Romulan women. Winona even visited the area they'd rigged up for a women's rec room, should any of them want a break from the seemingly inordinate amount of men on the ship. She'd quickly learned that, while Romulans made no societal distinction between men and women, mining wasn't a very popular female occupation, especially not if a woman had a family. There was no room nor place for children on a mining ship, and it seemed to be general Romulan consensus that children left for extended periods of time with fathers didn't turn out half so well as those left with mothers. Onen herself, so she told Winona, had planned to quit once she was married and find a job closer to home.

Indeed the majority of the Romulan women Winona met did not seem terribly different than many of her sister-officers in Starfleet. Oh, there were cultural differences, some of them quite baffling, and many of them were a lot rougher around the edges than she was used to, but it seemed Shakespeare had been right when he said all women were sisters under the skin. If she could not feel precisely at home among them, she at least felt less bleak and isolated.

They often spoke of the families they'd lost on Romulus, and the depth of their sorrow was another thing she had in common with them. None of them ever cried--tears seemed to be an anathema among Romulans--but the force of their grief seemed almost the worse for that lack. And finally, one evening, Onen asked about George.

The question hit Winona hard. She was sitting on a chair that had been cobbled together from unused packing cases, Jim in her arms, and her eyes took in the curious assemblage around her. The lights in the rec room were the same greenish things to be found all over the ship, and their illumination made her companions seem all the more alien. For a moment she quailed, but then found, to her surprised, that she wanted to respond.

"George was…the other half of me," she said, the words little more than a whisper. "He was the kindest and bravest man I ever knew, and he always knew how to make a person laugh. I met him at Starfleet Academy, and I hadn't known him a month before I knew he was It--the one I wanted. We were married a week after graduation, just before we received our ship assignments--half our class was there. Two years later I had Jim's brother Sam, and we both took six months' family leave. It was--"

She broke off, too choked to continue--she didn't want to cry in front of these women who would never cry themselves. Not until Onen laid a hand on hers.

"We know that humans weep," she said. "There is no shame in it." Her hand was warm on Winona's, fever-hot, but it didn't make her recoil like the Romulan's. There was nothing in Onen's touch but compassion, and that almost hurt worse than cruelty. It broke every barrier Winona had built around her heartache, and she wept until there were no more tears left in her--until she woke Jim, who immediately started fussing. Onen took him from her, and shared a silent glance with Idan, one of the ship's engineers. What that glance meant, Winona didn't know, and just now grieved to deeply to ca re.

Finally, after what seemed half an eternity, Onen touched her hand again, and Winona lifted red-rimmed eyes to hers.

"Romulan tradition is to wear your grief openly," she said, touching one of the delicate tattoos on her cheek. "We have made ours permanent, but ordinarily they are only temporary, a natural dye that fades in time, marking the progression of mourning. If you like, I can give you some."

Winona inwardly recoiled at that--she didn't want to ally herself with the Romulans in any way. And yet…these women were her supporters, in their odd way, and she knew they offered this only out of kindness--of sympathy. And…they would not last forever. Whenever she escaped--and she was determined she _would _escape, even if it took her years to figure out how--they would be gone.

Silently she nodded, and saw out of the corner of her eye several women rise and move off, presumably to fetch what was needed. If there was any chance of catharsis in this, she was willing to try it--and maybe, if she had some tangible outward sign of her hurt, the Romulan would take the hint and leave her alone.

When the others returned, they bore a very strange assortment of things--a black paste in a white plastic bowl, smelling faintly like henna, and delicate brushes she was surprised to find anywhere on a mining ship. She wondered what they were ordinarily for as Onen dragged her makeshift chair around, sitting directly in front of her. Idan set the bowl on a packing case beside Onen, and laid out the brushes.

Winona shut her eyes when Onen started, drawing a delicate pattern along her forehead. The paste was cool, smelling more strongly of henna now that it was closer, and tingled faintly.

"An etching on your brow," Onen said as she worked, "to show he is always in your thoughts." Winona felt the brush trace along the crown of her hairline before moving just above her eyebrows. "Did your husband stroke your cheek?"

"He did," she whispered, fascinated in spite of herself.

"Then also along your cheeks, in remembrance of his touch." The brush drew another complicated pattern over each of her cheekbones, light and ticklish, and it did indeed remind her of the feel of George's fingers. One faint curve extended to the corner of her eyes, branching delicately beneath them. "Because he is always in your sight," Onen explained, carefully intent on her work. When she was finally through, and Winona opened her eyes, she said, "Where is the human heart?"

Winona silently laid her hand over it, feeling it beat steady beneath her fingers.

"I will paint one there too, if you'd like," Onen said gravely. "A tattoo above the heart is the most intimate, for the deepest pain that cannot be shared."

Winona nodded, and twitched aside the collar of her shirt. She didn't shut her eyes this time; now she looked at the other women, several of whom were tending to Jim. She wondered, not for the first time, how many were mourning the children they would never have, in addition to the living they'd lost. She might hate the Romulan, but she couldn't hate these women, who had done nothing but follow their captain's orders when he destroyed their ship. They were as much victims of circumstance as she was, and had lost as much--more, in fact--than she had. And it wasn't their fault that same insane captain had opted to keep her for his equally insane reasons.

"How long will these lasts?" she asked, when Onen finally sat back, finished.

"On a Romulan they last around a hundred days. Human skin is slightly different, so for you it may be more, or it may be less."

One hundred days. Assuming, as she had to for sanity's sake, that the Romulan would leave her alone so long as they lasted, that gave her almost a third of a year. Surely that would be long enough to regain her mental strength as well as her physical. And she could try to find out if there was any feasible way _out _of here.

"We'll leave that on an hour," Onen went on. "You can wash it off before you return to your quarters. That gives it enough time to set."

Winona nodded again, careful to keep her hair out of her face so as not to smudge any of the paste. It felt so…so _alien_ on her skin, but maybe that was good right now--if she could maintain recognition of the alien, she could hold on to what was familiar. What belonged. She had to keep differentiating the two.

"Thank you," she said, and her words had more meaning than any of them could know. Maybe more than she knew herself.

----

It wasn't difficult for Nero to find enough to keep him busy and thus away from Winona's quarters. Though the _Narada _was capable of repairing much of itself, there was still plenty to set in order before they figured out where in all hells they were going to go next.

They'd been moving, albeit not in warp, for the last week and a half--he didn't want anyone attacking them until the ship was back operating at optimum. After that, he thought, they might go deal with the Federation outposts along the Neutral Zone--though he couldn't let Winona know he was doing if they did. Indeed any move he made against the Federation would have to be done with utmost secrecy, or he'd wreck whatever progress he might make with her in the meantime. But he was in no hurry; he wasn't yet sure how much time he had to kill before Spock arrived, and wouldn't until he could finish analyzing the data the _Narada _had collected on the black hole.

_Maybe we shouldn't antagonize the Federation any more yet, anyway,_ he thought, as he calculated supply lists. He'd cordoned off what was effectively an office, a little room built with bulky black crates and a desk soldered from mining scrap. Computers had been haphazardly cobbled together, black cording snaking over the floor waiting to trip the unwary. _We can't take care of Vulcan without the red matter, and if we give the Federation too much warning too soon…_ If they did, who knew what defenses Starfleet might come up with. He _had _to know when to expect Spock before he could decide any concrete course of action. Timing, he thought morbidly, was everything. With the Federation, with Vulcan…with Winona. He desperately needed patience, and quite often he was desperately short of it. Something had to give, sooner or later. He only hoped it wouldn't be his sanity, not realizing how far it had slipped already.

He let the stylus slip unheeded from his fingers, his eyes staring unfocused at nothing. Winona wasn't the only one subject to bouts of crippling grief--Nero, cracked though he was, occasionally seemed to half drown in his own misery. He'd retained enough sanity to realize, in brief, infrequent flashes, just how very damaged he was--but they were brief, and those revelations never lasted long. Invariably they led to blinding rage, rage he sometimes took out on his crew but most often turned inward, freezing it rather than letting it burn itself out. Which was, though he did not realize it, much, much worse, because it didn't actually go _away _when he did that--it simply added to the glacier in his fractured mind, that would sooner or later crack apart in the mother of all avalanches. And Fate help whoever was in his way when it did.

He touched a button on his keypad, bringing up his last hologram of Mandana. Her clear eyes were happy, filled with laughter, her hair spilling down her back and over her shoulders in loose, fair curls--such unusual hair. It was often difficult to remember his life Before, though it was not so long ago at all--to remember a time when he still knew what hope was, when he wasn't so at the mercy of his nigh-ungovernable temper.

He wondered what Winona was like, in her Before--if her sea-grey eyes ever danced with mirth like Mandana's. If her face lit up when she saw her husband as Mandana's had for him. A fierce stab of unwarranted jealousy ripped through him at the thought, and he was so fast approaching the deepest downswing of his depression that he couldn't see what was _wrong _with that jealousy. That he should be allowed to mourn Mandana where he expected Winona to forget George struck him as in no way unfair, for Nero's grief was an insanely selfish thing. Fate had gifted him with Winona and Jim; nothing would ever convince him otherwise, and if Fate meant him to have them, they ought to be happy. She ought to move on, even if he never fully did. And she _would_--he'd see to that. He'd make her laugh again--he'd make her love him, make her forget George Kirk and all her Before.

Somehow.

The fact that he did not yet _know _how in no way dissuaded his purpose. He had time, and he fully believed he could force himself to have however much patience it might take. The fact that he could never put the phantom feel of her hair on his fingers from his mind was in no sense ominous to him, any more than was the fact that he never stopped wondering how smooth her cheek might feel. How smooth _all _her skin might feel, cool human skin--and wondering what his touch might feel to her. How long it would take her to stop recoiling when he _did _touch her--for she did, in ways that were barely perceptible. She probably wouldn't admit it even to herself, but he saw it, and it hurt him unreasonably. Then again, so did everything else that didn't infuriate him.

He put his head in his hands, suddenly bone-weary. He wanted Mandana--he wanted Winona--he wanted _someone_. But Mandana was dead, and Winona was for now out of reach. For now, he was on his own.

----

When Onen came on shift, she found Ayel at work already.

They had, most unusually, the bridge all to themselves. So many of the crew were tied up elsewhere that they weren't bothering with more than a skeleton crew up here, not so far out in deep space. That suited Onen; she and Ayel had an Agreement, and it was easiest to honor it when no one else was about.

She'd almost completely repaired the weapons controls, and navigation was as good as it had ever been--a maze of cords and piping wound around beneath the console, but it _worked_ and that was the main thing. She'd even cleaned the black surface of the console itself, feeling obscurely that she wanted to do something for her poor battered ship besides what was necessary. The _Narada _was all the home they had, now.

Ayel wasn't in the captain's chair--instead he was standing in front of the view screen, staring out at the stars. Nero had never actually forbidden anyone sitting in his chair, but nobody _wanted _to. It was the captain's chair, and however unstable he might now be, he was still the captain.

"You spoke with her?" he said, not turning around.

"I have." Onen paused. "We gave her the markings."

That did make him turn, startled. "Was that--wise?" Fate alone knew how Nero would react.

Onen shrugged. "She deserves it," she said simply.

None of the crew knew what to make of this strange whim of their captain's, but it made most of them vaguely uneasy. Destroying the _Kelvin _they could understand, given his rage at discovering how far into the past they'd come, but this…it was the _mercy _of it that disturbed them, for it was easy enough to believe that mercy might not last, and none of them were yet so hardened that they wanted to see Winona die.

"How is she?"

"Grieving. Miserable. Unstable." Onen paused again. "How is _he_?"

Ayel sighed. "The same. Even I don't know what he plans to do now. I'm not sure he knows."

To that Onen said nothing. No matter what happened, she couldn't see this ending well--the smaller picture or the bigger. They all knew Nero didn't intend to return to Romulus yet, but beyond that they knew…nothing. Less than nothing, because none of them could even guess and hope to have anything like accuracy.

"She may do him some good," she said at last, "if she doesn't crack. What he will do for her, though…" That was the part she simply couldn't see working. Winona hated Nero with, even Onen had to admit, very strong justification. And she could not see that ever changing; she, Onen, could certainly not imagine forgiving the man who murdered her husband, however benevolent he might be after the fact. No sane person would, let alone be able to love him, which seemed to be Nero's goal. Not unless he somehow broke her mind--which was, Onen thought, a distinct possibility, though she knew he'd never do it on purpose. She had no idea what Stockholm Syndrome was, but if she had she would have thought it to be the only way he would ever get what he wanted.

"We have to take care of that baby," she added. "If it weren't for him, I'm sure she'd give herself Final Honor." Which was a Romulan euphemism for suicide.

Ayel shuddered, and she knew what he was thinking--only Fate knew what Nero would do if that happened. He was already so obsessed with the woman that if she did die it might well shatter what was left of his fragile sanity. It placed a burden upon Winona that Onen would never wish on anyone. Logically, for the safety of the entire ship, she ought to try to steer Winona toward Nero, but even the thought went entirely against her grain. Nero's want was a very selfish one--once upon a time Onen would have thought him a good husband for anyone, but now…now Oren, the captain she had known and respected, was gone, and though she would serve Nero as loyally as she always had, she didn't have to like what he'd become.

As though he'd read her mind, Ayel said, "It's possible she might bring him back. Maybe. Make him stop and think about what he's doing."

Now it was Onen who sighed. "I think she already is," she said. "But…not enough. Not yet. And if he gets angry with her…." she trailed off, not wanting or needing to finish that statement.

Ayel, who had known his captain much longer than Onen, shook his head. "It would take a lot, I think. He's gone…_strange_ about women. You might not have seen it, but he's been much harder on us than he has on any of you. I don't know how long it will last, but as you said, she's making him think."

"Until we deal with Vulcan. I don't think there would be any way to keep that secret from her."

Ayel let out a frustrated sigh, pacing before the view screen. "She might well be an old woman by then," he muttered. "How long do humans live?"

The question troubled Onen. "I don't know, exactly," she said. "Not as long as we do. Even if she didn't give herself Final Honor…." Once again, she didn't have to finish the sentence. If her lifespan was too short, they'd _still _have to deal with Nero when she died, and who knew if he'd be any more capable of handling it in thirty years, or forty? Onen would guess Winona to be little older than herself, but she had a hazy idea that humans rarely lived more than a century. Nero was only forty--still quite young for a Romulan; assuming they didn't die violently, they could reach three centuries, maybe even more.

But that was a problem they could stave off for another day--Onen didn't need another worry, and neither did Ayel.

"Do you think she'll try to escape?" he asked, pausing his pacing to look at her. Onen shook her head.

"Not yet," she said, "and probably not for some time. She's not stupid, Ayel; I don't think she'd try anything if she wasn't absolutely certain it would work. Especially not with her son." Thank all Fate for that child--he and his safety tied Winona here far more effectively than anything else could have. And when he was older--old enough to walk, think, speak--he might, if Nero was good to him, become quite attached to the _Narada_. Onen couldn't see Nero _not _being good to the boy, because he wanted the son he lost as much as the wife. What Winona might make of that, Onen didn't know, and didn't want to speculate. Nothing good, she was sure.

Her answer seemed to relieve Ayel, though he clearly had one more worry. "How will you explain her markings to him?"

Fortunately, Onen had already thought of that. "I'll tell him their fading will let him know when the worst of her grief has passed, and so will know when to…pay her more attention. He really doesn't want to force her into anything, and this is--tangible deterrent. He will look at her and remember how deeply she mourns, and will let her alone--more or less--until they fade." Of that she was relatively certain--broken and half-mad though Nero was, he wasn't a complete monster, and it was Onen's hope that Winona's presence might keep him from becoming one. She just also hoped the poor woman wouldn't break in the process--but then, she was strong, and once the worst of her grief was spent might well bear up under anything. So long as Nero continued associating her with Mandana, he'd never be cruel to her--her or her son. And maybe she'd just learn to make the best of it. As Onen said, she wasn't stupid--she wouldn't try to escape unless she was damn sure it would work, and none of them would give her the opportunity. Much as Onen felt for her, she had the best interest of the _Narada's _crew at heart--and that interest meant Winona had to stay, whether she wanted to or not. They'd try to make her life as easy as they could, but none of them would ever let her go.

----

Alone in her quarters--alone but for Jim, anyway--Winona was inspecting her markings. She didn't quite know what to make of them.

They were beautiful, in their way--Onen could easily have been an artist, had her life been different. Flowing green-black patterns, some delicate, some strong, all painted with intense care, and she thought of their meanings as she touched them. Onen was right; they were cathartic, in some odd sense she could not wholly define--visible signs of thought and pain, rendered into an art form. There were, Winona knew, many cultures on Earth that displayed their mourning openly, whether through dress or jewelry or, ironically, face paint. There were native tribes in North America who cut their hair, and did not cease official mourning until it had grown back.

She sat back on her bunk, staring at the walls--like seemingly everything else on this ship, they were dull black, and she wondered just what kind of metal they were made out of. She'd been thinking, since she and Jim came back here--thinking of escape.

Onen had also been right when she told Ayel that Winona wouldn't even consider trying unless she was absolutely and completely sure it would work. And to gain that certainty she needed three things--to be able to speak Romulan, and to read it, and to learn the layout of this bloody huge ship. The groundwork for the first two could be laid with the holovid--she suspected that was why the Romulan had given it to her--but the third would require outside assistance. And a great deal of cunning.

It was beginning to dawn on her that sooner or later she'd have to toss the Romulan some kind of bone, if only so he wouldn't grow suspicious of her curiosity. She didn't think she could ever give him all that he wanted--she just couldn't bring herself to do it--but she could, eventually, let him believe she actually enjoyed his company. It wouldn't be easy, but if nothing else it would be the kind of endurance test she'd never got at the Academy. She could let him think he had her genuine companionship, if nothing more; perhaps she could even force herself to pretend affection, in time. Something told her he craved that even more than…the other. _That_ he could likely get from at least one of the women in his crew, but it wasn't all he wanted. Not by half. And she could give him some sign, however false, because she had a feeling he was so blindly obsessed he'd look no further than whatever she gave him.

Later. Later, when she wasn't so mazed with grief she could hardly think straight. She'd need all her wits about her when she did start implementing her plain, and that…would take a while. It was just as well, since it would look odd if she tried it so soon anyway. But eventually….

Eventually, she was going to escape. It might take years, but she was determined she wouldn't live out the rest of her life on this ship--her or Doctor Sy. And she'd be damned if she'd let Jim grow up here, so far from his own kind. Someday, they were going home.

----

Poor Winona, she's got the entire deck stacked against her and doesn't even know it. She's stronger than she thinks, though, and a lot more cunning than any of the Romulans would give a human credit for. As for Nero, the poor bastard's so broken I can't help but feel a little sorry for him, creepy though he is. Anyway, thanks to all my reviewers--you guys make my day. :)


	5. Hope and Agony

A/N: In which Winona plans, Nero vacillates between woobie and really, really creepy, and the Romulans begin to be cautiously optimistic.

----

_You don't say, you will _

_But inside I know_

_You don't say that it hurts_

_And tonight killed slow_

_All the love, in the world_

_Won't let you let go - let you, let go_

--Beth Hart

---

A month passed, then two, then three. Winona had no idea where they were going or what they were doing, and she didn't ask. She was careful each morning when she washed her face--careful not to scrub, that the tattoos might last as long as possible.

The worst fierce flame of her grief burnt down to embers, helped largely by the Romulan women. And when it had--when she could _think _again, and move without pain--she considered the next part of her plan.

As she'd suspected, the markings on her face prompted the Romulan to mostly leave her alone. Onen or one of the other women had probably spoken to him, too, advising him to back off while she was still such a mess. She was glad he had, too, because it gave her time to think and work on phase one of her plan--learning Romulan. The women were more helpful than the holovid, for they were more than happy to teach her--and in return she taught them the details of Terran standard they would never learn from formal lessons. Fortunately for her she had a decent gift with languages, and though Romulan was unlike any she'd ever studied she picked it up fairly quickly. The _writing _was much more difficult, but she figured she could leave that until she was reasonably fluent in the spoken language. She wasn't in any hurry--she couldn't afford to be.

Meanwhile, her son grew--grew so rapidly it wasn't long before she had to cobble together new baby clothes, and though he wasn't yet sleeping through the night he at least woke her up less. The women continued to fuss over him, and she was content enough to let them, they had so little joy in life.

Halfway through the third month, when her markings were noticeably faded, the Romulan finally paid her another visit, and when he asked her to go walking she didn't protest. This would be a trial run, she thought--a chance to see if she was ready to start sowing the seeds of the third part of her plan.

"I thought I might show you things at a lower altitude," he said, and she would swear there was something like amusement in his voice. It was a strange thing to hear, since it was still side-by-side with grief--a combination that shouldn't have been possible, but somehow he managed it. That disturbing intensity in his eyes had not diminished, but she'd steeled herself for it and it was not so unsettling now.

And, she could tell, he was making an effort to subdue it. He seemed to have consciously reduced his stride as he led her through the lower levels, filled with machinery far too complex for her to comprehend, all naked black wires and twisted piping, those greenish lights glowing at every work station. It was weirdly humid down here, in the very bowels of the ship, and eventually she figured out why--here and there were pockets of dark water, which steamed faintly.

"We used to filter ore, in our Before," the Romulan explained, when he caught on to her curiosity. "It has no purpose now, but many of the crew come from more humid areas, and it keeps the air from growing too dry."

It surprised her he would be so considerate of his crew--that didn't seem in keeping with what she'd seen (and heard) of him.

"Don't you worry about it shorting anything out?" Winona asked, actually looking up at him. He seemed…different right now, as though moving through his ship somehow calmed him. His expression was less fierce, his exhausting _intensity_ a little subdued. He was inspecting his domain; he was thinking of something besides her. It was much easier to be around him when he was in such a state.

"All the electronics on this level are sealed and grounded--and most of them are wired further above. The water ran through here much faster, once." Even his _voice _was calmer down here, almost--almost a little wistful, and she wondered what he was thinking. She still didn't really _know _her enemy.

They passed a few personnel as they walked, all busy at their stations, and she wondered what they _did _down here. They gave their captain a nod--apparently Romulan civilians didn't bother with salutes--and if they were at all curious about her presence, they didn't show it. And while they seemed a little wary of their captain, they weren't afraid of him. Interesting.

They paused at an elevator, and the Romulan said, "There is a proper deck up there--no drops. I'd like to show you the bridge."

She was more than happy to see that, even though she'd never be able to escape from there--she might at least get some inkling of how the ship worked. The elevator put her in a little closer proximity with him than she precisely liked, but she'd steeled herself against that as well. It was a thing she could mostly ignore if she tried hard enough--she could stave off her discomfort if she thought of something else. In this case it was Jim, little Jim with his amazingly blue eyes. Let the Romulan think she'd simply grown more accustomed to him.

The ship's bridge was…impressive, almost hellishly so. Like the rest of the ship, it was largely black and utilitarian, the helm and comm station lit with green. It was so huge Winona had a feeling it had only recently been walled off from the rest of the ship--that once it had been just another bit of the interior vastness.

It was also only sparsely populated--Onen sat at the help, while the Romulan's second-in-command, Ayel, seemed to be in charge of things even though he was pacing rather than sitting. Anir, one of the other women Winona had come to know, was manning communications, and that seemed to be it. She wondered what the hell everyone else was doing.

Onen didn't actually smile when she saw her, but some of the tension in her face eased. "I was not sure when I would see you here," she said, in Romulan, and Winona had to think a moment before she could line up a response.

"It is not too high for me," she managed, with a half-smile--her pronunciation was still atrocious, though not so bad as it had once been.

She could sense the Romulan's surprise, even without looking at him. "I don't know you spoke our language," he said--in Standard, fortunately, and Winona managed a wry laugh.

"I don't," she said. "Not really. They've been trying to teach me, but it's a complicated language. I still don't understand past tense at all." This charade was so much easier with Onen around--Onen, with whom she was genuinely comfortable. "And I don't know if I'll _ever _manage to read it, the alphabet is so different."

"Doesn't help that none of us can read Standard," Onen added. "What did you call it--the blind leading the blind?"

Winona nodded, peering at the glowing green patterns on the helm console. "I'm figuring out how to render Romulan phonetically in the Standard alphabet--and probably misspelling most of it--but the writing…Terran Standard only has twenty-six letters. Even now some people on Earth have difficulty learning some of the Asian dialects, because the writing is so different."

The Romulan had moved closer while she spoke--though not, she noticed, so close as to violate the unspoken barrier she'd surrounded herself with. "I read Standard," he said. "I could give you lessons."

She looked at him, surprised. Not only that he could read Standard--for she wouldn't have thought it something a miner would think worthwhile to learn--but that he would think to teach it to her. And yet it was almost perfect; it killed two birds with one stone. She would learn to read Romulan while giving him some of the companionship he craved in an environment that wouldn't make her horribly uncomfortable.

"I--think I'd like that," she said, and it was amazing how much his countenance could lift without that fierce tattooed face changing expression in the slightest. It was a little startling, how pleased that seemed to make him. Maybe she was right--maybe he'd take whatever he could get, for now, especially if she let him believe it might go somewhere. And _she'd _get exactly what she needed.

Onen looked from one to the other, and Winona thought she saw something like relief in the navigator's face. Maybe she was glad of this, too, for whatever reasons of her own.

"In the morning," he said, half a question. "Maybe after you've eaten?"

She thought a moment. "That would work," she said. "It's said the Terran mind is freshest in the morning, anyway, and I'm sure Doctor Sy could look after Jim. And," she added, glancing at Onen, "maybe once I've got some idea what I'm doing, I could turn it around and teach you all to read Standard."

The navigator actually did give her a smile this time, and that smile eased some of Winona's own tension. She'd put up with all sorts of unpleasant things at the Academy; this would simply be one more, and at least her time with all the women would grant her a bit of a reprieve. She could tolerate Nero if she knew there was something less awful awaiting her.

_You thought his name_. That startled her; it was the first time she'd done so since she arrived. She didn't know if it was a good sign or a bad one, so she decided not to think about it right now--she could put the thought away and examine it later, when she was away from him, from all of them. The Romulan--Nero--whatever she wanted to call him, was watching her again, his expression a most peculiar and theoretically impossible mixture of reserve, grief, possession, and something very like hope, which only reminded her how crazy he really was. He might be a functional captain, but that didn't mean he was _sane_, and no matter what came later, she had to keep that in mind.

He quirked an eyebrow, silently inviting her to explore the rest of the bridge, and she did, albeit carefully. All the instrument panels were much rougher than anything in Starfleet, still carrying the black-and-green motif, but the technology continued to be far removed from anything she was used to. Even if she had a decade, there was likely no way in hell she would ever be able to get any use out of anything in here; she'd have to find some other means of aiding her escape.

She lingered a while, but eventually she had no choice but to return to the Romulan's side. There was something almost…comforting…in the furnace of his proximity, despite the fact that the ship itself was rather warmer than the _Kelvin _had ever been, and the fact that she thought so sent off all kinds of alarms in her head. She couldn't start thinking that--she couldn't let herself identify with him at all, or she risked…too much. Far too much. She _had _to keep her head clear.

He must have seen something--who knew what--in her face, for he looked at her gravely. "I think, maybe, you should eat now," he said. "I will take you back to your doctor."

Winona, bewildered by his sudden shift of mood, bade Onen farewell and followed him back through the labyrinth of the ship's corridors and platforms, trying vainly to memorize them. When he delivered her to the door of her quarters, he turned to her and said, half short and half hesitant, "You know that if you need anything, you only have to ask me." Those black-black eyes seemed to hold hers a moment, paralyzing her where she stood, and after a moment she managed to nod.

"I know," she said quietly, forcing herself to speak. The only thing she needed was her freedom, which she was not about to ask him for, but she had to acknowledge his meaning, his intent.

He reached up as if to touch her hair, but his hand stilled about an inch away. She hadn't flinched that time, not even slightly, but he still hesitated, and turned away without actually touching her. Not until he was out of sight around a corner did Winona realize she'd been holding her breath.

----

The next morning, insofar as there was 'morning' on a starship, found her in what passed for the Romulan's office, that hastily-cobbled-together space crammed with equipment. He'd made room for her at the massive, impromptu desk, carefully placing her chair a certain distance from him--she wondered why he was being so respectful of her unspoken boundaries, and how he even _knew _about them. Crazy or not, he was damned perceptive in some ways.

He gave her a nod and something that was not quite a smile, and gestured her to sit. She did, only a little awkwardly; once again she'd steeled herself against his proximity, and a little awkwardness on her part was still very understandable. After all, even though she'd been here several months, she hadn't actually seen him very much, and he had to know how intimidating he was.

There were several data pads on the desk, neatly lined up--unsurprisingly they were black, though the screens themselves were the white she was used to. She tried not to bite her lip when the Romulan took the seat beside her--she might have tried to prepare herself for such proximity, but she could only do so much. That oil-ale-soap smell seemed to surround her, almost infused with that inferno of his body temperature, but somehow she managed not to twitch.

"This one I programmed with both alphabets," he said, touching the pad nearest her. "The Romulan equivalents of your twenty-six, and others related to them with similar meanings."

She took the pad and perused it, somewhat surprised at how well-organized it was. "Were you ever a teacher?" she asked, scanning all the compartmentalized contents.

He looked at her, for the first time she had met him genuinely startled. "No," he said, "but my wife was, before we married."

Ah. His wife. The proverbial elephant in the room. Mandana--a pretty name, if very strange to Winona, a woman who had apparently looked rather unfortunately like her. "It seems to have rubbed off on you," she said, after a very uncomfortable silence. "One of my Starfleet instructors might have put this together like you have."

It was an odd sort of quasi-compliment, and he took it as such. "She used to quiz me," he said. "I didn't receive much higher education--it's somewhat wasted on a miner--but she would force little tests on me. She said just because I was a miner it was no excuse for ignorance."

That actually made her smile, just a little. Crazy the Romulan might be, but his wife sounded almost like someone Winona would have liked. Nero couldn't have been so mad when he was married to her, either; if the woman was anything like the shape she was slowly taking in Winona's mind, she wouldn't have put up with it.

_You thought his name again._ It didn't seem so peculiar this time, though, and in any case it might well be a good thing. Her plan would be easier to implement if she could bring herself to acknowledge that he _had _a name, especially a name so fitting to his madness.

She wasn't looking at him, but she could feel him studying her closely, with a mixture of curiosity and something else she had no name for, nor did she want to look for one. It made her deeply uncomfortable, more aware than ever of the peculiarly forceful elements of his presence, and to break the tension she found herself asking almost hesitantly, "Do you…have any pictures of her?"

He looked away from her, and was silent so long she wondered if she'd pissed him off. Finally, though, he stood, and brought a little holo cube from a makeshift shelf. He set it on the desk and touched a small button on its side, and a greenish hologram sprang from it. It must have been taken not long before he'd left Romulus, for she was obviously pregnant--a beautiful woman who did indeed bear an unsettling resemblance to Winona herself. She was laughing, her fair hair caught in the wind, and looked completely _happy_--it was an expression she simply could not reconcile with the unsettling grief-pain-fury-obsession with the Romulan beside her. It was difficult to believe he could have been married to a woman like that--as she'd suspected, he must once have been a very, very different person.

Her eyes flicked from the hologram to his profile, and the expression on his face startled the hell out of her. She had no idea what he'd been, before, but there seemed to be a distinct echo of that dead man in his face now. The pain and grief were tempered by what she couldn't help but recognize as love--slightly obsessive love, but love nonetheless. It was made even more disturbing when juxtaposed with the black tattoos, the almost demonic cant of his eyebrows, but she could almost…pity him, in that moment, watching the last image he'd taken of his dead wife.

_This man killed your husband, _she reminded herself. _He destroyed your ship, and the only reason he let you live was because you remind him of that woman. Don't forget that._

She wouldn't--she couldn't--but that didn't stop her feeling half-sorry for him. It was easier to see now that he hadn't always been a monster--that, in what he called his Before, he might even have been a person she could have got along with. The contrast of that thought with what she'd seen of him now triggered an almost dizzying sense of dissonance.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly, the words escaping her mouth without consulting her brain. He'd killed her husband and all her friends aboard the _Kelvin _for absolutely no reason at all, but for that fleeting moment she could pity him and mean it.

He looked at her, those black eyes obviously startled. "Don't be," he said, echoing Onen's words. "It was none of your doing, or your fault." Now it was _he _who seemed something like uncomfortable, and she wondered if it was because _her _loss was very much _his _fault--her grief, and the markings on her face that displayed that grief, were entirely his doing. He might never say so aloud, but he knew it, and she knew he knew it, and what an odd dynamic that created; she wondered if there wasn't some way she could use it. He obviously didn't like to see her in pain, yet he was the root cause of all of it. Hmm.

Now it was she who looked away, unable to bear that scrutiny any longer. The sheer depth of his intensity was as bad as ever it had been today; he must have forgotten to consciously tamp it down. It made her skin crawl, though not entirely unpleasantly, for it was more like a low-grade electrical current than anything overtly menacing. He simply radiated tension and heat like some kind of humanoid sun.

"Winona…" But he trailed off, for there was nothing he could say, no apology he could make that wouldn't be completely hypocritical. In that at least she held the upper hand, because no matter what happened in the future, the fact that he'd murdered her husband would always hang in the background, unspoken.

"I know," she said, because she knew he wouldn't say anything else, nor did she want him to. She didn't think she could handle it if he did, and she flat-out refused to cry in front of him, ever, especially not when she knew what Romulans thought of tears. The women had been far more understanding than she would have expected, but she was under no illusions as to what this one might think of it. She'd betray no weakness to him, not if she could help it. Nevertheless, it took great effort to blink back her tears, the sharp burning in her eyes, and she didn't turn back to him until any suspicious moisture was gone and her expression a complete mask. The mask itself was something of a giveaway, but it was a rather more Romulan reaction. If she was going to fight her enemy, she had to become like it, to a certain degree, and if she had to cry she was going to make damn sure nobody else saw it.

If only he'd stop _looking _at her. Distraction was necessary, so she touched the pad again, the screen shifting through the complexities of the Romulan alphabet as she tried valiantly to rally a more businesslike demeanor--and if she looked down, her hair hid anything her expression might have betrayed. It would give her a few more moments to collect herself into something more stony and less human.

The bastard didn't take the hint, though; she could still feel his eyes on her, as though his gaze was a palpable, physical thing. Damn his perception--she knew he was reading the lines of tension in her shoulders, even if he couldn't see her face, and it made her want to scream, to throw something, anything at him, and she held onto that rage like a lifeline, because if she was angry she wasn't grieving, and if she wasn't grieving she wasn't in any danger of crying. If he was so foolish as to say anything she really _would _throw something at him, consequences be damned, but he remained silent, and whatever might be going on in his head was something she couldn't even begin to fathom.

"Winona, what?" she said at last, unable to help herself. "Winona _what_?" Now she did bite her lip, trying with almost Herculean effort to hold back any further words, for they could not end well at all. "I don't understand your world or your people, I don't understand your technology or anything about you, you want me to be your _wife _even though you know I'm not and you miss her as much as I miss George--"

She finally broke off, only because the tears she'd tried so valiantly to hold back took over. There was no knowing how he'd react to that, but right now she was too worked up to even care. Escape seemed so impossible just now, even more so than trying to go _on _like this, so far from home culturally as well as physically.

She wouldn't have dared look at him even if she'd cared what he might do, but even through her unendurable grief she managed to be surprised at what he _did _do. He laid a very light hand on her shoulder, a hand so hot she could feel it through her shirt, and for some reason even Winona couldn't fathom she let him pull her into a very loose, very light hug. Her rational mind wanted to kill him for it, but rationality was currently extremely far away, and the primitive, almost insanely grieving part of her craved any kind of comfort, even if it _was _coming from her worst enemy. She'd hate herself for it later, but right now her strength had completely deserted her and left her as lost and alone as a child. Monster or not, he was so damned _warm_, and whatever he thought of this sudden breakdown he kept to himself. He might not realize how badly her mind was slipping, or if he did he might think it a good thing--she couldn't know, and right now she didn't care. All she could do was sink down into the darkness in her mind once more, while her husband's murderer tried to comfort her for his own crime.

----

A/N: Poor Winona, I didn't mean for her to start losing her marbles like this, but apparently she's determined to. Even an officer can only handle so much PTSD, and now she has to deal with creepy obsessive Nero and his bizarre little kindnesses. I don't know if she's precisely heading into Stockholm Syndrome territory, because she's a little too aware of exactly what's going on, but she's heading into _something_.

Anyways, as always, thank you to all you lovely reviewers out there. :)


	6. Comfort and Unease

A/N: Poor Winona--she knows, on some level, that what's going on in her head is pretty wrong, but she's starting to not care. Bluehorserunning, you took what was in my mind and put better words around it than I could have; she's running out of the level of energy it takes to hate all her captors so much, and the fact that others have been kind to her isn't helping. I have a feeling she'll hang onto the idea of escape for quite a while simply because she thinks she _ought _to, but as time goes on it will be less a viable plan and more something she tells herself she wants.

I have to admit I didn't intend Nero's plan to actually _work _at all--like _Amor Delirus_, it was originally conceived as a straight-up tragedy, but apparently I'm more of a hopeless (if twisted) romantic than I thought. XD

_It grips you so hold me_

_It stains you so hold me_

_It hates you so hold me_

_It holds you so hold me_

_Until it sleeps_

--Metallica

----

Winona had no idea how long she stayed like that, curled up with her head on the Romulan's shoulder. After some small eternity her tears ran dry, but lingered sticky-salty on her face long after they'd ceased. Eventually she became aware that the Romulan was lightly stroking her hair, and what little of her mind still properly functioned registered that it was a very simple touch, shorn of the almost insane level of _need _that had infused every other touch he'd ever given her. For once he was only giving, asking nothing, and because of that she simply couldn't bring herself to move. It had been so damn long since she'd had any real contact with a human being; Doctor Sy's examinations didn't really count, since they were strictly medical, and though Nero wasn't human he was as close as she was going to find here. Her sanity had slipped to the point where she could hate him yet take genuine comfort from him. She was going crazy and she didn't care; it seemed like forever since she'd even dared ask for comfort. She was crazy, she was still hurting beyond what she'd thought she could possibly endure, she was--

--asleep.

----

Nero held her and watched her, long after she fell asleep. She felt so small in his arms, and he realized she had to have lost weight since she first arrived. Small, and cool, a living, breathing being who he for only the second time saw, really _saw_, as a creature in her own right, unconnected at all to Mandana.

The simple fact was that he hadn't put any thought at all into this plan of his. Fate had dropped this woman and her son on him, and he'd hung onto them because dammit, he deserved at least one good thing in his life. Two, in their case. It was only now, after all these months, that he was realizing the sheer level of silent agony he'd put Winona through--that he was actually acknowledging all that pain was his fault. Her reticence hadn't done it; even the grief-markings, painted so carefully on her skin, hadn't really made it hit home. Nothing had, until now. She was not simply an extension of Mandana, and he had to stop thinking of her as such, even subconsciously. He couldn't leave her alone with this any longer, though he was unsure if she'd let him help her. Yet.

Very carefully, so as not to wake her, he leaned back in his chair and drew her onto his lap--she was so much smaller than him that it was almost like holding a child. How had he not seen this before? Had he really been so blinded by his own grief?

_Of course you have. _Once upon a time Nero hadn't been nearly so selfish, and the breakdown of all Winona's carefully-controlled reserve seemed to wake some sleeping part of the man he'd been, Before. Oren, it seemed, was not wholly dead after all.

_This is your fault. _One finger traced the drying lines of her tears, close but not quite touching her face. It was, and he knew it, and he also knew there was nothing he could say that would ever change that. She had every right to hate him as much as he hated the Vulcans, especially Spock, and that thought…hurt, in a way he didn't think anything could anymore. It was something he might never be able to change, either. _You should just let her go._

He knew that, too, but--he couldn't. Especially not now that he'd finally woken to Winona-the-person, the woman who hurt as much as he did. He needed her in a way quite different from either wish he'd already had; not as a wife, not as surrogate mother to his surrogate son, but as _Winona_, a woman he realized he needed to know much more about. The mother, the woman, the Starfleet officer--everything. Somehow he had to get her to talk to him, to trust him even a little.

_-Why should she? You killed her husband, you're keeping her prisoner--what reason does she have to trust you?-_

He recognized the inner voice, vaguely--the voice of Oren, of what little of his former self remained lurking in the back of his mind.

_I'll give her one. I'll show her I mean her no harm--I'll make her happy, somehow. I know I could make her want to stay, if I had enough time._

_-It's wrong, Nero. It's wrong and it's selfish, and what you want from her she would never give if her mind wasn't on the way to breaking. You have no _right _to do this.-_

_I love her. That's my right. _And Nero was somewhat startled to realize he was starting to actually mean it. All these months, in the rare moments he looked at her at all, he'd done so as though she were a second Mandana, some element of his life re-incarnated. Pre-incarnated, he supposed, since this was long before either of them would be born. She wasn't, though, and he was determined to do something with this newfound realization. Just _what _he didn't yet know, but…something. As Mandana would have said, knowledge was power.

Winona shifted, her expression deeply unhappy even in her sleep. He brushed the tear-sticky hair back from her forehead, wishing there was actually something he could say. For now he'd settle for giving her what little comfort he could, and hope she wasn't quite so miserable on waking.

---

When Winona finally climbed, all unwilling, back to consciousness, she found she still had her head rested on Nero's shoulder, curled up like a very forlorn little girl. Part of her wanted to shove him away like something poisonous, but she was just so damn _tired_…she couldn't summon enough energy to even move. That…was a problem, a very big problem, but she was drained to the point that even the thought of moving was too much effort.

At least he didn't try to say anything this time. He was just _there_, something solid and close to human, and his presence soothed her in spite of everything. Half-mad murderer he might be, but he was also the only thing she had to hang onto at the moment

And it helped that he wasn't trying to manipulate her. Even bone-weary as she was, she recognized that there was no ulterior motive in him, not at the moment--he was offering solace the only way he knew how, and it was a mark of her mental state that she could accept it with only a little reservation. Even the strange distinctive scent of him, normally so nerve-wracking, seemed a bizarre comfort now, because she knew it, she was _used _to it--it was familiar by now, in spite of the relative rarity of his actual presence in her life the last few months. She was cracking apart and she knew it, but just now she didn't care in the slightest.

For a long, long while she lay still and said nothing, wondering why she wasn't hearing his heartbeat, not realizing that his heart was in his side. The steady rhythm of his breathing was soothing, though, so much so that she forgot to find him creepy, forgot to be nervous or wary or even unduly uncomfortable. All she could do was soak up his heat, wondering why it was so nice when the whole ship was already warmer than any other she'd served on in Starfleet.

The only reason she eventually had to move was because her legs were falling asleep. With a little trepidation, for she had no idea what she might see there, she sat back and searched Nero's face for…she didn't know what. Some expression, any expression that might give her a clue what was going on in his fractured mind. To her surprise she found no need there, no desire physical or spiritual--she had no words nor name for what she did see, and she suspected he didn't, either, that he understood this no more than she. There was a tinge of sorrow, a tinge of guilt--even, she would swear, a tinge of trepidation, as though he were waiting for her judgment as much as she was his.

"I should check on Jim," Winona said, when she finally found her voice. "Doctor Sy has him right now."

She stood, and fortunately her legs still had enough circulation to hold her, even if the pins-and-needles prickle took hold of her feet. Out of sheer habit she tidied up the pads, organizing them on the desk and carefully not looking at him--until he spoke, and her wide eyes snapped back to him, incredibly startled.

"May I…see him?" he asked, and Winona swallowed. He wasn't ordering her, he wasn't even assuming she wouldn't mind--he was actually asking, and if she said no, she had a feeling he'd respect it. So she surprised the hell out of herself when she said,

"All right."

He seemed just as surprised as she was, if the rise of those eyebrows was any indication. Maybe he found the whole situation as surreal as she did.

She gave herself a mental shake, and headed out into the humid warmth of the _Narada_. After all this time she actually managed to find her way--partway--back to the section of the ship that held her and Doctor Sy's quarters. Finally she ran into a T-junction and had no clue whether to go left or right, and wound up following Nero when he went right. Sooner or later she was going to have to finish learning her way around this damn ship, she thought vaguely, insofar as she could focus on any single thought.

She retrieved Jim from Doctor Sy, who looked a little startled to see Nero with her, but she said nothing. Jim had grown quite a bit in the last few months, his face no longer the red scrunchy face of a newborn. His big eyes were just as blue, though, and he was developing a head of golden fuzz, rather like his mother's hair. Winona took him into her quarters, which wound up rather cramped with Nero as well. He was staring at the baby as though he'd never seen one before--which, she realized, he might not have, at least up close. The child his wife was carrying must have been his first. Would have been.

"Can I--hold him?" he asked, and Winona looked at him skeptically. She didn't like the thought of handing her little son over to this man whose hands were half the baby's size.

"Have you ever actually held a baby?" she asked, and was unsurprised when he shook his head.

"Are they so fragile, that you think I shouldn't?" he said, staring at Jim's big blue eyes.

"Well…no," Winona admitted. "But you still have to be careful and support their heads." She demonstrated, and then, with very great reservation, passed the infant over. The awkwardness with which Nero held him was such a contrast with his ordinary demeanor that she almost couldn't fathom it--she'd never yet seen him look even remotely uncertain, but holding such a tiny creature as a baby seemed to actually unnerve him a little.

"His eyes are…blue," he said, sounding a little surprised.

"Most Caucasian babies' eyes are," Winona said, trying to resist the urge to snatch her son back. "They often change color as the child grows, but I don't think his will." They were even bluer than George's had been, deep as the sky and quite startlingly bright.

"Blue eyes were very rare on Romulus," he said, looking at the child with something like fascination. "And fair hair. Our ancestors who left Vulcan must not have been that genetically diverse."

It was a testament to how deeply numb Winona still was, that she could allow Nero anywhere near Jim, let alone let him hold her son. Were she in her right mind she would never be able to force herself to do that, to let him within an arm's reach of the baby. Once her…shock, whatever she wanted to call it…wore off, she'd probably shudder at the very memory, but for now it was not so terrible a thing. In this hazy cocoon of warm denial, everything was not so painful, and though it would be dangerous to stay here, she still didn't care. She'd give anything to keep that pain away even for a little while, and if that meant letting the bit of her that was swiftly fracturing have its say, then so be it. She could leave it any time she liked. Really.

----

Winona was right in thinking Nero had never really been around babies before. A very few young children, but never babies, small creatures this young. Jim was so small Nero half feared he'd…break him if he so much as breathed wrong. The child didn't break, though; instead those big blue eyes looked up at him, curious and too young to be afraid. The idea that he was looking at the future James T. Kirk simply…didn't really compute, any more than it had when Winona and her son had first arrived here. The idea of this little human as an adult was incomprehensible.

Would his own child have been like this, he wondered? Were Romulan babies less fragile than human, or were all newborn humanoids equally helpless? Mandana would have known what to do, exactly how to hold the infant, and would no doubt be chiding and instructing him in how to do it properly. Winona must not be finding anything wrong with his technique, or she'd surely be much more nervous. The fact that he held little Jim as though he were made of glass probably helped, a bit.

The child blinked at him, and then, quite without warning, spit up all over his coat and wailed a piercing siren cry.

Nero, murderous Romulan, half-crazed captain of a ship whose technology was far beyond anything Winona had ever dreamed of, actually jumped. Winona herself stared, and then started laughing, a dangerous edge of hysteria in it, covering her mouth as thought to muffle it. Her eyes were a little too manic as she took baby Jim and immediately started cleaning him up. She handed Nero a small towel, and, still laughing that truly terrible laugh, said, "Babies…do that. It should wash out easily enough."

Nero looked at the towel, and his coat, and the baby, and then at Winona, who seemed even closer to breaking than she had when she'd cried on his shoulder. He dabbed somewhat ineffectually at his coat before giving up--someone else on this ship had to know how to get baby spit-up out. He hoped.

"Winona," he said, watching her try to care for the squalling baby without breaking down again herself. She didn't seem to hear him, so he touched her shoulder, very lightly, and didn't know what to think when she didn't jump or flinch back. "Winona."

Now she did look at him, pale, strained, her grey eyes still red-rimmed from her crying. "Winona, don't…try to be anything but yourself," he said softly. "You don't need to hide your tears from me. I know you are not Romulan, and I don't expect you to--to pretend you are. If you need to cry, or scream--don't…be ashamed to."

He watched her very carefully, trying to gauge whatever reaction she might possibly have to that. He who was normally articulate enough now couldn't find the words he wanted, casting about through his knowledge of Standard to say what he wished and largely failing. Maybe there were no words in any language for what he was trying to say, but it seemed that Winona, in part at least, understood.

"I can't promise that," she said steadily, her grey eyes never leaving his. "I don't know that I could promise anything now, but…I…I'll try." He wasn't at all sure he liked the tone that underlay her words--it was still a little hysterical in spite of her obvious exhaustion. Even Nero could recognize, now that he'd really looked at her, how fragmented her mind was becoming, but he didn't yet know what to do about it.

He touched her hair, very lightly--a simple touch, gentle and nothing more, the kind of thing he might actually have done in his Before. He was as confused and near-broken as she was, and he knew there was for now nothing more he could say. All he could do was give her a very slight nod, just a brief inclination of his head, acknowledging his newfound knowledge in a way he simply couldn't put into words. The only returning sign she gave was a very slight widening of her eyes, but she'd not missed the gesture.

With that he left her in peace, feeling she might want some time to herself. _He _certainly did; he needed to try to sort out everything that had happened this morning, and trod the way back to his quarters even more silently than usual. He didn't even see Ayel, busy at work upgrading part of the navigational computer--his second-in-command watched him carefully, staring at his back long after he'd gone. Whatever Ayel might be thinking, even Nero might not have known, but he finished his job as quickly as he could and hurried off to find Onen.

----

A/N: They both surprised me a bit in here. Trying to keep their respective mindsets consistent was…difficult, and I hope I came close to doing it right. Next chapter will include the reactions of the Romulans closest to Nero and Winona--Ayel, Onen, some of the women who Winona visits at odd hours, and of course Doctor Sy. Most of them, I think, will be as confused as our two protagonists, each in their own special way. XD

I have not abandoned _Amor Delirus_, either, but this current chapter is not cooperating at all, and I keep going back and deleting huge chunks and starting over. That version of Onen, poor broken woman that she is, is proving very difficult to write, and since it's alternating between her and Uhura it's making my life unfortunately difficult. And as always, thank-you to all my lovely reviewers. You guys always make my day. :)


	7. Time and Curiosity

A/N: Ugh, I am SO SORRY this update has taken so long. The holidays ate my soul, and ever since then I've been both too busy and too lost for inspiration on all my fic. Hopefully that will change now. In this particular chapter, everyone is bewildered except for Jim, who is just small and adorable.

----

Doctor Sy was not quite sure what to think.

She saw Winona every morning, and while she was satisfied with the woman's physical recovery, her mental state was…worrisome. Which was perfectly understandable; the doctor herself wasn't in the best mental shape, but she was better off than Winona--she'd lost her shipmates, but at least she hadn't listened to her husband die, and looking after Winona gave her an anchor, something to _do._

Eventually, when Winona no longer needed constant monitoring, she'd gone to the _Narada's _sickbay. The ship had a surprising number of medics and one full-blown doctor, and after some initial suspicion they'd started teaching her to use their medical technology, and the intricacies of Romulan physiology. After all, she'd said, what _else _was she to do with her time?

After two months of that, when she'd come to know them all better, she'd started covert therapy, under the guise of curiosity. They'd never accept it if they knew what she was doing--too damn proud--but through seemingly-casual questions she learned much about their histories and where exactly they were in the various stages of grief. She'd like to think she did some good, too.

Winona, though…her mental state deteriorated at a slow but steady pace for months, until, perhaps three weeks after she began her lessons in Romulan with the ship's captain, it at least leveled off and grew no worse. That ought to have been an encouraging sign, but since the doctor had no idea _why_,it still concerned her. It was by now obvious Nero meant her no physical harm, but how in the Universe he'd halted her deterioration Sy couldn't begin to guess. So one day, when Ayel stopped by the infirmary with a mild cut on his hand, she cornered him and asked.

"I realize this is an odd question," she said, as she bandaged his hand, "but you work with your captain closer than anyone, and I want your opinion."

"On what?" Aye asked warily, though he had to already know.

"On he and Winona," she said bluntly. "He's not made her any _better_, but he seems to have stopped her getting worse. I want to know if you have any idea why."

Ayel was silent a moment while she cleaned the blood away. In what little she'd seen of him, he seemed more stable than any of the other Romulans she'd met so far, his tattooed face neither so fierce nor so anguished. "I think," he said slowly, "he's started looking at her as _her _and not his wife. He brings her up to the bridge a lot, and the way he looks at her is…different."

Perceptive, this Romulan. "How?"

Ayel seemed to grope for words. "Not so…hungry. I don't know how to describe it. She's been…good for him, in a way. He can still have a terrible temper, but it's not constant anymore. He's a little--a very little--like he was Before."

She'd long ago noticed that all of them seemed to infuse 'before' with a capital B, without even realizing they were doing so. "Is that a good thing?" she asked.

"It has to be. The navigator and I have talked it over often. It seems like he wants her to be happy just so she'll be happy, not because he wants anything from her. That's…much more like he was, Before. He went insane when he lost his wife, and he's--not so much, now."

"I thought she'd go insane herself, for a while," Sy said, tidying up her instruments. "Now I don't think she'll get any worse, but I don't know if she'll get better. It's not just her husband she lost--she had another son back on Earth, and I don't think she lets herself think of him too often because she knows, on some level, it would break her. But that's not healthy."

"No one on this ship is healthy," he said, to her surprise. "You don't know what we were like, Before. We're lost in space right now, until the Captain decides where he wants us to go. Going back to Romulus--we just can't yet, none of us. It's home but it's also not. Not this far in the past. And Romulus in this time is much more dangerous than it was in ours--it's our planet but not as we knew it, and going there now might be even worse than staying out here."

Yes, very perceptive. And after the destruction of the _Kelvin_ they could hardly seek a place on any Federation world…they'd left themselves in something of a jam. Their own small world, aboard this ship, had little choice but to find an uninhabited planet if they ever wanted to settle. And it might take years for them to decide to do it.

"The Captain wouldn't do it yet, anyway," he said. "We're waiting for someone, and I think he'll keep moving up here until he's worked out when that someone will arrive. He wants justice for the destruction of our home planet." He looked away. "We deserve it, but--not in this time. What he would do would only allow most of this quadrant to be destroyed in a century and a half."

Sy stared at him, her huge dark eyes even wider.

"The Alpha Quadrant is eventually invaded by something called the Dominion. If he does what he wants, we'll lose that war. All of us, not just the Federation. It took the Federation, the Empire, and the Klingons to defeat them."

Anything that could actually unite all three _had _to be bad beyond all imagining. "What is it he wants?" she whispered.

"To destroy Vulcan," Ayel said flatly. "In our time they promised they would save Romulus, and they failed us. I understand why he wants it, but it would do much more harm than good. Vengeance is our right, but the _consequences_…."

He looked back at her, his dark eyes burning. "I think your Winona will help. He already…behaves much better when she's around, and if he doesn't realize it yet it will eventually occur to him that if he did destroy Vulcan, he'd also destroy any…_anything_ she might come to feel for him. And I don't think he'd risk that."

That…was far too much for Sy to process just yet. Future wars aside, the cataclysmic effect the destruction of Vulcan would have on the Federation beggared all imagination. Ayel was right--his captain _had _gone insane.

She was quiet a very, very long time. Finally she said, "But you really think Winona's having a good effect on him?"

"Everybody who works with him does. He used to be very different, Before," Ayel said quietly. "We all were, but he's changed the most. If you'd known him Before you'd think him _then _and him _now _were two different people. What he's like when he's near Winona…makes me think Oren isn't dead after all."

"Oren?" Sy tried to repeat it, only to completely mangle it.

"His true name. Our names are usually impossible for humans to pronounce--if we simplify them and flip them backward you can. He'll never be Oren again, but maybe she can make Nero…closer to what he was." If he weren't a Romulan, Sy would swear there was almost something wistful in his tone.

"The only question, then," she said softly, "is what he'll make of her. She too was very different, in our Before."

"Onen says she's seen that. The women have tried to help her feel more…at home, her. The grief-markings were Onen's idea. Most of us had never seen a human before--she's as alien to us as we are to her, and they've been trying to learn about her as well as teach her about us. She's been giving them lessons in Standard when she's not learning Romulan from the Captain, and Onen said she even smiled once when one of them made some mistake."

She'd smiled? _That _had to be a positive sign. Sy at least had realized long ago that escape simply wasn't going to be possible, but she knew Winona held onto the dream like a lifeline and so never said so. The best they could hope for was a decent life here, and it was a relief to know the women were trying. Most of the Romulans, she'd come to realize quite a while ago, weren't really a bad sort--angry, grieving, but not so murderous as their captain. Very difficult to understand, at times, but they _were _a truly alien culture, one with whom the Federation had no experience. She'd been slowly learning about them, and it was a relief to know Winona was, too.

"Thank you," she said, when she'd finished putting away her things. "I appreciate your opinion."

He gave her a nod that said _you're welcome_ without words, and for the first time she got the impression he was nodding as to an equal. Somehow they'd become something like cautious allies, and she didn't think that was necessarily a bad thing. Resistance till the bitter end might be noble, but it was also fatal and impractical. Like Winona, she was trying to make the best of what she had here--as were all the Romulans, for that matter. Now that she'd gotten to know a few she could see them as people, not a collective of monsters; the only one she'd still regarded so was their captain, and if Ayel was to be believed, even he was changing, or trying to. She could only hope he'd change enough before he had the ability to destroy Vulcan.

----

Ayel resumed his station when he left the infirmary--he had the bridge for now, as the captain was inspecting something in Engineering. Onen was there as well, and though there were others on the bridge he didn't lower his voice when he asked how Winona was. Ninety percent of the crew were personally invested in that whole thing now, because he and Onen weren't the only ones who'd seen the change the human woman had brought about in Nero.

"Well enough. She says Jim is finally sleeping through the night."

"Human children grow so quickly," Idan put in. "He will be tall, I think. Tall and strong, for a human anyway." It might prove difficult to know what to allow the child to do or not do when he got older, since human children were even more alien to them all than Romulan. And that…raised another question that had occurred to Ayel, that he didn't yet know how to raise in turn to Nero. Right now they were all still far too grieved to even consider it, but in the years to come…well, there were a lot of people on the _Narada_, and sooner or later at least a few of them would form relationships, and relationships occasionally resulted in children. Especially given the fact that they hadn't much they could use in the way of birth control--it just wasn't something that came up on a mining ship. He had no idea how Nero would react to the thought, and so said nothing--time enough for that later, whenever the subject of interpersonal relationships came up. Technically they weren't supposed to happen aboard any ship, military or civilian, but the _Narada_…was something of a special circumstance. As the human doctor had realized, the ship was its own small world, a civilization set apart, and so was not always going to follow standard ship protocol.

They all came to somewhat stricter attention when Nero entered the bridge, each and every one of them covertly assessing his mood. It was almost impossible to predict what sort of temper he'd be in if they didn't know when he'd last seen Winona, but this time they seemed to be in luck, for he only gave them all a nod before assuming his place in the captain's chair. The intensity that disturbed even his crew was still there, but he no longer looked nor felt like he might devolve into violence if anyone so much as breathed wrong. All things considered it wasn't technically much progress, but it was a beginning.

"Find me a planet, Ayel," Nero said, without preamble, and the entire bridge stared at him. "Something uninhabited, something the Federation will not find."

"A…_planet_, Sir?" Ayel asked, wondering if he'd heard right.

"A planet. I still have not fully worked out when what we need will be arriving, but it will not be for at least a Standard decade, and I don't intend to spend all those years up here." It seemed Nero was in one of his more manic stages, but this time at least the edge of instability was decidedly blunted. Fortunately.

Ayel glanced at Onen, a glance that communicated far more than words could have done. Much could happen in ten years--perhaps…perhaps it would work. Perhaps Winona would change Nero even a little, even just enough to make him forget his insane revenge by the time Spock and his ship finally did arrive. Certainly nothing else in the entire universe was likely to.

"Aye, sir." He fed the request into the computer, feeling the console hum warmly beneath his hand. Much as he loved the _Narada_, he was relieved his captain had decided against lurking in it forever; he and all his crew were miners, unused to spending prolonged periods of time away from an actual atmosphere. The ship was gigantic--over six Standard miles long, and still growing--but it wasn't equal to open ground, open sky. On a planet they could grow food, modify their existing mining tools--and grieve. Properly grieve, with all the ritual Romulan mourning customs entailed; there was much more to it than the facial markings, but up here many of the rites were impossible to carry out. They could grieve, and who knew--maybe they could even heal, a little.

----

They were not to find one right away, but Nero had not expected to. Finding an uninhabited Class M planet wasn't terribly difficult; the trouble was finding one where the Federation wouldn't spot them. This far in the past their patrols were not nearly so regular nor so efficient as they had been in the _Narada's _proper timeline, but it wasn't something any of them wanted to risk. Nero had an especial paranoia about it, because if the Federation _did _find them, they wouldn't just take his crew prisoner, they would take away Winona. And he knew, in his broken way, that she hadn't yet reached a stage where she wouldn't leave if given the opportunity.

For Nero wasn't stupid. Part of him knew full well that what he was doing was terribly wrong, and quite unfair to her, but that was hardly going to stop him. He was determined that in time, even if she were given the chance to leave, to return to Earth, he'd make it so she wouldn't want to. He'd make her trust him, make her love him--but first he needed to make certain she wouldn't go insane.

He didn't tell her about the planet until they'd found one. It had taken a month for Ayel to locate something suitable, and in that time Nero and Winona had continued their Romulan tutorials, and occasional walks around the ship. He knew she still wouldn't have a chance of finding her way around on her own, but the walks made her think, made her ask questions, drew her out of the rather perilous pit within her own mind. She even took Jim along, sometimes, carrying him in a kind of makeshift back-brace--he would stare at everything with those amazingly blue eyes, occasionally giving his mother's hair a cheerful tug. He at least out of the three humans seemed perfectly content on the _Narada_, curious and cheerful, even if he did have a tendency to throw up on whoever was holding him. Winona had assured Nero, when he'd had to clean his coat for the fifth time, that was just something babies did, and it didn't mean the child was ill.

"We might have a problem, when he moves to solid food," she said one day, cradling the sleeping boy. Nero didn't know if it was his imagination, but she looked marginally less worn--the dark circles beneath her grey eyes had faded, and her complexion now was only pallid because of lack of sunlight rather than poor health. She always did look different when she held Jim; the child seemed to focus her, to draw her whole consciousness to the immediate present. "Your food is very--spicy, and human children have incredibly sensitive taste buds, as well as sensitive stomachs." She tickled Jim's face, and when the baby gurgled up at her she actually--wonder of wonders--smiled. It was a faint smile, and fleeting, but it was _there_, and that more than anything that had yet happened here eased some of Nero's inner tension.

It also gave him an opening. "I told Ayel to look for a planet," he said slowly, "and yesterday he found one. I think we could--establish a colony there." Part of him dreaded her response to that--dreaded the thought that she might take that and ask why, if he intended to settle anywhere, he didn't just send her home. In all the months after her arrival, she had yet to ask for or demand release--from him, anyway, and he suspected it was because she was too proud to beg. If she ever were to ask, there would be no satisfactory answer he could give her. _I don't want to_ wouldn't cut much ice, nor would it help his case any. He took the fact that she was thinking that far ahead as a good sign--that she was thinking of a future life with the Romulans, and not of escape.

Winona looked up at him, sharply, her grey eyes piercing. "Not Romulus?" she asked, and Nero shook his head.

"No. We are our own world, now. It is…if you were thrown a century and a half into your world's past, would you still consider it home?"

She paused a long while before answering. "No," she said, her tone both thoughtful and unreadable. "No, I certainly wouldn't. Earth then was…very different."

"And this Romulus is very unlike mine," he said gravely. "To set foot there now would be pain beyond measure."

There was nothing Winona could say to that. It had grown much easier in the last months for her to comprehend just how much pain all the Romulans had suffered--that she was hardly alone in that. They'd become _people _to her, distinct individuals, but Nero at least had always been the monster, the enemy--the one she had to fight, if only mentally. And she had, for a time, until she'd grown too weary and her mind too fragile, and then…this…had settled in. She had no word for it, no name, but it was that 'this' that allowed her to think of a future among these people, to look beyond the beginning and end of each day and week and month and see some kind of _life _instead. And she'd been away from her home and her family long enough that the thought of making planetfall with the Romulans wasn't something unendurable; Jim was nearly a year old now, and she wanted her son to see _sky_. She didn't want his first memories to be of this strange ship, which at times seemed suffused with the grief and misery of its occupants.

"Tell me more," she said, when the silence stretched too long and Jim started trying to gnaw on her hair. It had grown long in the last year, longer than she'd ever had it, and she'd taken to wearing it as some of the Romulan women did, drawn back from her forehead in a single braid. It was practical, and for some bizarre reason she couldn't bring herself to cut it. Many of the women had hacked theirs off, as a sign of grief, but Onen had kept hers--because, she'd said, her fiancé had liked it so. George had always enjoyed playing with her hair, so Winona kept hers as well. Even if it meant she occasionally had to pry the braid away from a curious baby.

"It is a little cooler than Romulus, though a bit warmer than Earth. Very small polar caps, and only two massive continents. The gravity is somewhat less than Earth's, and the air more oxygen-rich--it might take some getting used to, for all of us."

He was watching her closely, as he often did, and as usual she didn't quite know what to make of it. She'd never seen him seem so genuinely _pleased_, so strangely happy in spite of his obvious reservations, and it occurred to her that he wanted off this ship as much as she did, for all it had been his home. Something about that happiness disturbed her a little, because it offered a more concrete glimpse than ever just what kind of person he'd been before all this, which only made the contrast between that idea and the reality of what he was now even sharper. Winona had given up trying to fathom him weeks ago, though, since it really seemed to be practically impossible--and the fact that he was still obviously unstable didn't help. She doubted he could fathom himself, if asked to; possibly because, like her, he was afraid to look too deep. Winona herself didn't dare allow anything like true introspection, because she didn't want to know what she might find inside her own slightly fractured mind--her psyche had glued itself back together with only the most tenuous of bonds, and she wasn't about to jar it just yet. If it smashed again, she might not be able to put it back together.

"I think I would like to see the sun again," she said at last, giving Jim her finger en lieu of her hair. "I would like to see this planet, for myself." And no, she wouldn't let herself think about Earth, wouldn't compare any of it to home, because that way lay nothing good. She'd taken all her love of Earth, all the happy memories of her own Before that brought such crippling homesickness, and locked them carefully away in a trunk at the back of her mind. They were still _there_, and she'd never let herself forget them, but for now they slept where they couldn't torment her.

She'd swear he actually smiled, brief and quick as lightning, and gone as soon. "We land at the continent's dawn. Ayel found a place where we might realistically settle, with conditions conducive to Romulans and humans. I…would like you to come with me, when I go out to inspect it. If you…would."

The strange pauses in Nero's speech to her were fairly new, and Winona still wasn't sure what to make of them. Though it had been going on for quite some time, she still couldn't reconcile the idea that he was _asking _her, that he was giving her a chance to say 'no'.

Not that she was about to, in this case. "Of course I will," she said, without hesitation. This at least needed no thought, no consideration--it was _outside_, it was a world with fresh air, under a proper sky with a proper sun…no, she wasn't going to say no. And, for the first time in nearly a year, she felt that she had something to look forward to.

----

A/N: Aaand planetfall is going to introduce a whole host of other complications, as everyone's dynamic is going to be quite different than it was on the _Narada_, not just Nero and Winona's. At least I've left off being quite so cruel to them both? (For now, anyway. We'll see what happens later, because apparently I'm evil and can't be properly nice to anybody.)


End file.
